Threat of Sea Level Rise to Pacific Nations

Low-lying Pacific Island nations face severe pressures from rising sea levels caused by climate change. Rising sea levels erode coastlines, damage infrastructure, cause flooding, and contaminate freshwater reserves and crop fields. Eventually, they force population shifts and reduce economic zones and territorial seas. The resulting societal pressure to adapt to these changes further strains affected countries. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) predicted a rise of more than three feet by 2100 under high-emissions scenarios, primarily threatening low-lying coastal areas and islands. Terrorist groups and extremist organizations may capitalize on the destabilizing effects of climate change, adding political, economic, and social complexity to the issue.

Date: The threat to Pacific Island nations from rising sea levels was first detected in the 1970s, though evidence and monitoring expanded significantly in later decades.

Place: Oceania

Key Events

• 1977: Severe Tuvalu flooding.
• 1993: Prime Minister Bikenibeu Paeniu outlines Tuvalu’s climate-change stance.
• December 1997: At the Kyoto Climate Change Convention, the Tuvaluan representative states sea-level rise is affecting Tuvalu’s survival.
• 1999: Two uninhabited Kiribati islets sink underwater.
• September 2001: American environmental activist Lester R. Brown declares Tuvaluans among the first climate refugees.
• 2002: Tuvalu Prime Minister Koloa Talake calls for legal action against international carbon polluters; Leo Falcam, president of Federated States of Micronesia (FSM), states he expects massive population relocation as a result of rising sea levels.
• 2003: Kiribati government begins implementing climate change strategies.
• 2004: Carteret Islands Council of Elders forms Tulele Peisa to organize voluntary relocation of population.
• 2007: Australian Greens propose a climate refugee visa.
• 2008: Kiribati President Anote Tong requests training for Kiribati citizens to become skilled migrants. November 11, Mohamed Nasheed is elected president of the Maldives, campaigning for international attention to sea-level threats to the Maldives.
• November 2009: Kiribati governmental video appeal states that the rising sea levels contaminate freshwater reserves. In December, at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Denmark, the Tuvaluan delegation demands a new protocol for raising emission cuts, which stalls the conference but is ultimately rejected.
• March 2009: The CIA creates a division focusing on climate change—The Center on Climate Change and National Security. The program was later disbanded around 2012.
• March 2012: President Tong negotiates for five thousand acres of relocation land in Fiji. IPCC predicts sea rise will exceed three feet by 2100.
• September 2014: Conference on Small Island Developing States in Samoa focuses on climate change.
• February 13, 2015: Research states sea-level rise often changes islands rather than sinks them. In August, Tong requests an international moratorium on new coal mines. In September, New Zealand’s first “climate change refugee” is deported to Kiribati.
• September 2016: US President Obama states, “Climate change poses a significant and growing threat to national security, both at home and abroad.”
• September 2019: Climate change is omitted as a threat in US President Trump’s national security strategy.
• October 2021: The Biden Administration releases reports showing the growing threat climate change poses to national security, calling the issue an “existential threat.”
• March 2022: IPCC Sixth Assessment Report emphasizes that small island developing states like those in the Pacific are among the most vulnerable to sea-level rise, predicting inevitable loss of land even with immediate global mitigation efforts.
• November 2022: COP27 establishes a “Loss and Damage” fund to help vulnerable nations, including Pacific islands, recover from climate impacts such as rising seas, after decades of advocacy by Pacific nations.
• November 2023: Tuvalu signs a groundbreaking agreement with Australia to allow for the permanent resettlement of Tuvaluan citizens displaced by climate change.
• March 2023: The UN General Assembly formally adopts a Vanuatu-led resolution requesting an advisory opinion from the International Court of Justice on states’ climate obligations.
• September 2024: A NASA analysis projected at least 6 inches of sea-level rise for several Pacific Island nations by 2053 and major increases in high-tide flooding.
• November 2024: At COP29, Pacific nations successfully lobby for explicit language in the final agreement recognizing “existential threats to territorial integrity” posed by sea-level rise.
• December 2024: The International Court of Justice begins hearings on the Vanuatu climate change case, a historic step that could influence future legal frameworks for addressing displacement from sea-level rise.
• February 2025: Scientific study confirms accelerated rates of sea-level rise around the Marshall Islands and Kiribati, leading to updated projections showing potential for some inhabited atolls to become uninhabitable within the next two decades without large-scale adaptation.

Status

Though it has been largely assumed that rising sea waters will drown the reef islands of the South Pacific, a study released in 2015 by coastal geomorphologist Paul Kench and colleagues states that rising sea levels do not automatically cause atolls to sink, and, in fact, in 80 percent of the islands studied, sediments of the islands, which are composed of crushed coral, shift and cause the islands to move or to grow. However, these patterns have been noted for undeveloped islands; those such as Kiribati, with existing sea walls, roads, and other human-made infrastructure, will have a more challenging experience with rising sea levels.

At the 2014 UN Climate Summit in New York, President Anote Tong of Kiribati was highly critical of the lack of response to his country’s plight on the part of developed nations. The rising sea levels in the Pacific have been the primary topic of conversation at climate conferences, including the 2014 Conference on Small Island Developing States. It was likely to be a topic of discussion at the 2015 United Nations Conference on Climate Change in Paris. Meanwhile, Australian and New Zealand leaders have refused to extend their commitments on climate change in the early 2010s. New Zealand’s first “climate change refugee,” Ioane Teitiota, was deported to Kiribati in September 2015.

Global mean sea level has risen about 10 centimeters since 1993, and the rate has more than doubled, from about 0.08 inch per year in 1993 to about 0.18 inch per year in 2023. From 1993 to 2023, the sea rose a total of 100.5 millimeters, making a humanitarian crisis nearly inevitable. As competition for resources, populations, and governmental instability grow, terrorist organizations have ample opportunity to capitalize on these weaknesses, exploiting them for their own gain. Recruitment and support are easier in times of turmoil, and as terrorist groups grow in human and monetary capital, violence increases.

In August 2024, a United Nations sea-level rise report incorporated findings from NASA’s Sea Level Change Team, highlighting the escalating threat to Pacific Island nations. The analysis projects that by the 2050s, high-tide flooding will increase by an order of magnitude across nearly all Pacific nations. Specifically, areas of Tuvalu currently experiencing fewer than five high-tide flood days annually could face around twenty-five flood days per year, while regions of Kiribati could endure approximately sixty-five flood days annually. These projections highlight the accelerating impact of sea-level rise on the habitability and infrastructure of Pacific nations.

In-Depth Overview

Coastal erosion became apparent around 1960 in several Pacific Island countries, including Fiji, and some communities responded by building seawalls. By 1970, retreating shorelines were also evident in Tonga, Samoa, and Tuvalu, as were increasing general temperatures in the Pacific. In the early 1990s, Prime Minister Bikenibeu Paeniu of Tuvalu established a national protocol to address climate change and, in 1997, told the United Nations that climate change presented severe risks to his country’s survival. In 2002, Tuvalu Prime Minister Koloa Talake suggested legal action against carbon polluters to combat climate change. That same year, President Leo Falcam of the Federated States of Micronesia announced that the world’s first “climate change refugees” faced probable relocation from their homelands.

In the early 2000s, the Kiribati government began developing long-term strategies to prepare the country for the predicted increasing sea level. In 2006, the Carteret Islands Council of Elders formed a nonprofit group that facilitated the voluntary relocation of the islands’ population of thirty-three hundred people. In 2007, the Saoluafata, Samoa villagers observed that their coastline had retreated by 164 feet since 1997. In 2008, Tong refused to accept his people’s fate as climate refugees, calling for training to help the population become skilled migrants. His government released an international video appeal, explaining that the sea was breaching their seawalls and contaminating their freshwater supply.

At the 2009 United Nations Climate Change Conference, representatives of Kiribati and Tuvalu adopted different strategies to deal with the rising sea levels affecting their countries. Tuvalu stuck to an agreed-upon cap on rising global temperatures of 1.5 degrees Celsius (34.7 degrees Fahrenheit). In 2011, Tong began negotiating to buy land in Fiji to eventually resettle Kiribati’s population when it became necessary to do so. By 2016, the Kiribati government, under President Taneti Maamau, shifted its focus from relocation to domestic climate resilience. The administration prioritized constructing sea walls and other coastal defenses to protect existing settlements, moving away from the original plan of using the Fijian land for resettlement. Tuvalu began implementing a formal migration agreement with Australia, allowing limited annual relocation as part of a long-term response to sea-level rise, with projections suggesting parts of the country could become uninhabitable by around 2050.

Asia is likely to be impacted more than any other global region. Seventy percent of the population predicted to experience a negative impact from sea level rises reside in Vietnam, Thailand, China, Bangladesh, India, Indonesia, the Philippines, and Japan. However, it is important to note that while these countries have large populations at risk, many Pacific Island nations, such as Tuvalu, Kiribati, and the Marshall Islands, face existential threats from sea-level rise. In these nations, even modest increases in sea level can render entire islands uninhabitable, leading to the potential displacement of their entire populations. In the 2020s, it was estimated that 50,000 Pacific Islanders each year were at risk of displacement due to climate impacts, with over half of the region’s population living in coastal areas. There were increasing calls for legal protections such as “climate visas,” as existing migration systems in countries like Australia and New Zealand were seen as inadequate for climate-displaced Pacific populations.

Other parts of the world are also at risk due to the threat of sea level rise. Egypt is at an elevated risk mainly because of sea-level rise and subsidence affecting the Nile Delta and Alexandria. The Netherlands is most at risk in Europe, with around 29 percent of its land situated below sea level, housing over 3 million people. Three of the most severely affected nations in the early twenty-first century remain in the Pacific, including the Marshall Islands, Kiribati, and Tuvalu. Funafuti, the capital atoll of Tuvalu, is experiencing land subsidence due to geological processes, with different areas sinking at varying rates. This subsidence, combined with a regional sea-level rise of about 0.2 inches per year—about 1.5 times the global average—intensifies the impacts of flooding and land loss. NASA research shows that while some areas of Funafuti sink noticeably, others remain more stable, which complicates adaptation efforts. Together, land sinking and rising seas pose a severe and accelerating threat to the atoll’s long-term habitability.

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