Malta elevates sea level rise on the world's peace and security agenda

Earth's warming is tipped to submerge low-lying coastal communities and islands, including parts of the Maltese archipelago – imperiling entire nations this century.

That's a climate risk that the small island nation in the Mediterranean Sea highlighted on Tuesday as part of its U.N. Security Council presidency this month. The position passes among the council's 15 members on a month-to-month basis.

"Rising seas are sinking futures. Sea-level rise is not only a threat in itself. It is a threat-multiplier," U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres told the council at the opening of the session.

The World Meteorological Organization has shown that global average sea levels rose faster since 1900 than over any preceding century in the last 3,000 years, he noted, and the global ocean warmed faster over the past century than at any time in the past 11,000 years.

"For the hundreds of millions of people living in small island developing states and other low-lying coastal areas around the world, sea level rise is a torrent of trouble," said Guterres. "And rising seas threaten the very existence of some low-lying communities and even countries."

During a more than three-hour session, Malta – which pioneered the world's legal framework for oceans – made the case that nations must focus more attention on the threat of rising sea levels and gaps in international law about how to handle the loss of land.

More broadly, Malta, as one of the 15-nation council's newest members, used its time in the diplomatic spotlight to showcase the existential threat posed by climate change as a matter of international peace and security.

In 1967, a speech by then-Maltese U.N. Ambassador Arvid Pardo to the U.N. General Assembly about ocean mineral resources beyond nations' jurisdictions led to the 1982 adoption of the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea, or UNCLOS.

After it came into force in 1994, UNCLOS created three new international organizations to manage ocean resources: the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea, based in Hamburg, Germany; the International Seabed Authority, based in Kingston, Jamaica; and the Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf, based in the U.N.'s headquarters at New York.

A 'disproportionate' impact

Low-lying coastal zones are inhabited by more than 600 million people and small island developing nations are home to over 60 million, Malta said in its concept note for the council session, citing scientific evidence that "sea level rise will displace millions in the years to come, and hundreds of millions by the year 2100."

The meeting was chaired by Malta's foreign minister Ian Borg, who also oversees European affairs and trade issues. Diplomats were also briefed by General Assembly President Csaba Körösi, who advised heeding local expertise and warned that if the world isn't careful it might just wind up in the place where it is headed.

"In less than 80 years from now, 250-400 million will likely need new homes in new locations. You don't need me to tell you that the displacement of hundreds of millions of people is a security risk," said Körösi.

"Climate-induced sea level rise is also provoking new legal questions that are at the very core of national and state identity. What happens to a nation's sovereignty, including U.N. membership, if it sinks beneath the sea?" he asked. "There are rules about the creation of a state, but none about physical disappearance. Who cares for their displaced population?"

It's not the first time the council has taken up the issue of sea level rise, but the only formal statement to come from a meeting is more than a decade old.

In 2011, the council expressed concern about the “possible security implications of climate change” in a statement real aloud by Germany's ambassador, Peter Wittig, during his nation's council presidency that month.

The council also held meetings on challenges facing small island nations and the security implications of sea level rise in 2015, 2017 and 2021.

Maltese U.N. Ambassador Vanessa Frazier, whose nation also is the European Union's smallest member, told a press briefing that part of the aim was to apply a "gender lens" to look at international security threats posed by sea level rise.

"Ocean-related climate security risks are a daily reality for many countries and peoples, and especially island nations and coastal regions," she said. "Women and girls often are disproportionately impacted by the threats of sea level rise."