United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres warned on Thursday that some areas of the Pacific are at risk of being “wiped out” due to hurricanes, ocean heatwaves, and rising sea levels resulting from climate change.
During a visit to Apia, the capital of Samoa, he stated that “rising sea levels pose a significant threat to Samoa and the Pacific, as well as other small island developing states, and these challenges require strong international action.”
Although Pacific nations contribute only 0.02% of global carbon emissions, the Secretary-General noted that they “are on the front lines of the climate crisis, facing extreme weather phenomena, from violent tropical storms to record heatwaves in the oceans.”
Guterres stated that the future of the islands depends on limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, a target that nearly 200 countries agreed to strive for at the 2015 United Nations climate change conference.
He urged wealthy countries to honor their commitments to finance the impacts of climate change in developing countries and called for international action to combat overfishing and plastic pollution in the Pacific in particular.
