_page-0001.jpg)
What's the article about?
- It talks about the rising threats of sea level rise across the globe.
Relevance:
- GS1: geographical features and their location-changes in critical geographical features (including water-bodies and ice-caps) and in flora and fauna and the effects of such changes;
- GS3: Environment – climate change
Context:
- Global Sea-level changes induced by climate change and the melting of major ice masses will exert a significant impact on communities worldwide especially small island developing states and in densely populated low lying urban areas.
- Recently the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) published a report – Global Sea-Level Rise and Implications Facts and Figures – highlighting the threats of sea level rise.
- On Tuesday, this report occupied centre stage at the UN Security Council’s first-ever debate on the impact of sea-level rise on global peace.
Global Sea Level Rise (SLR):
- Sea Level Rise is an increase in the level of the world’s oceans due to the effects of climate change, especially global warming, induced by three primary factors: Thermal Expansion, Melting Glaciers and Loss of Greenland and Antarctica’s ice sheets.
- Global sea level has been rising over the past century, and the rate has accelerated in recent decades.
- The average global sea level has risen 8.9 inches between 1880 and 2015. That’s much faster than in the previous 2,700 years.
Analysis:
- The UNSC session underlined the climate vulnerabilities of people living in low-lying areas.
- More than one in 10 people in the world, including those in megacities like Mumbai, New York, London, Dhaka, Shanghai and Buenos Aires, could face severe turmoil even if global warming is miraculously limited to 1.5 degrees — the Paris climate pact’s goal.
- The task for policymakers then is to prepare for massive social and economic dislocation. This will require building resilience at several levels.
Solutions to tackle SLR issue:
- Investing in R&D, infrastructure and warning systems to mitigate the loss of lives and property.
- Protecting coasts could require engineering, technological and ecological interventions — creating physical barriers, permeable pavements, sopping waters or reviving mangroves.
- Engineering solutions are often criticised because even the most robust protective structures deflect the energy of the waves to other areas. Armoured shorelines can also upset the delicate ecological balance of coastal habitats.
- In recent times, innovations to overcome such deficiencies by combining engineering and ecological approaches have been tried.
Way Forward:
- As the WMO has warned, the rising seas are a “threat-multiplier”.
- The rushing salty waters can aggravate disparities by playing havoc with agrarian systems and ruining the livelihoods of fishing communities.
- International law may well have to engage with the requirements of people dislocated by the sea, many of them rendered stateless.
- At the same time, dealing with emergencies, mitigating hardship and preparing people to deal with the vagaries of climate will require political will and action at the level of local governments.
- In India, this could test the resolve of urban municipalities and civic bodies that have struggled to do justice to their mandate, even in normal times.
