Due to global warming, the oceans will gain almost an additional meter around the islands of the Pacific and the Indian Ocean by the end of the century, according to scientists’ projections. If this certainly remains below the highest point of the flattest small island states, the multiplication of storms and wave-submersions will however get the better of the islands and atolls, making them uninhabitable. What will then become of the States and the populations they shelter? From symposiums to international conferences, cries of alarm follow one another and COP27 in Egypt is once again an opportunity for these small island countries to plead their cause.
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Apart from the Platonic myth of Atlantis, this mythical island the size of a continent which would have suddenly sunk beyond Gibraltar some nine millennia BC, the situation is unprecedented. States have certainly already disappeared in the course of history, absorbed or divided by wars, but none has yet been completely wiped off the map by a natural disaster. Yet this grim scenario seems inevitable for at least five island states by the end of the century, according to experts who study the effects of global warming.
The average level of seas and oceans has risen by around 23 cm since 1880, but their rise has accelerated sharply over the past 25 years. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), by 2050 it will have gained 30 cm more and 77 cm by 2100, according to the latest report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Combined with the natural disasters that will multiply, the islands will become uninhabitable before being swallowed up. Are thus condemned, according to the IPCC, the Maldives (Indian Ocean), Kiribati and Tuvalu (Polynesia), the Marshall Islands and Nauru (Oceania).
At the turn of the Indian Ocean: the atolls of the Maldives, a corner of paradise threatened by rising waters #climate change #ODD #FridayIsland pic.twitter.com/i0bh982F2x
— Thomas Pesquet (@Thom_astro) April 28, 2017
According to the Montevideo Convention on the Rights and Duties of States of 1933, a sovereign state consists of a defined territory, a permanent population, a government and the ability to interact with other states. What about statehood when the territory disappears? In the eyes of the international community, what remains for these landless states to continue to exist?
To anticipate this catastrophic scenario, the “greatest tragedy that a people, a country, a nation can face”, in the words of former Maldives President Mohamed Nasheed, several Pacific governments launched the Rising Nations initiative in September. The idea : “Convince the members of the UN to recognize our nation, even if we are submerged by water, because it is our identity”, Tuvalu Prime Minister Kausea Natano said. A “right to permanent existence” for small island states, defended in 2015 during COP21 in Paris.
How would these Nation States 2.0 work? You could have the land somewhere, the population somewhere else, and the government somewhere else, suggests Kamal Amakrane, director of the Center for Climate Mobility at Columbia University. This would first require a “political statement” of the UN, then a “treaty” between the threatened state and a state called “ host”, ready to welcome the government in exile in a sort of permanent embassy. Its population would then have dual nationality. The political process must be launched “as soon as possible” to preserve future uninhabitable states, calls Kamal Amakrane.
Last year, during COP26, the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Tuvalu archipelago, Simon Kofe, recorded a statement with his feet in the water to mark the spirits. This year, at a press conference in September, he raised the idea of a “digital twin” hosted in the metaverse to allow the archipelago to maintain its statehood.
Small subtlety all the same: the Convention of Montevideo does not specify if, when one speaks of territory, it is dry land or also maritime territory that is in question. However, for the island Republic of Kiribati, for example, the detail is far from trivial. Tiny in terms of land area, it has one of the largest Exclusive Economic Zones (EEZ) in the world with its 33 islands scattered over 3.5 million km 2 in the Pacific, which would make its disappearance complicated. Members of the Pacific Islands Forum, including Australia and New Zealand, have already expressed concern. They proclaimed in an August 2021 statement that their maritime zones “would continue to apply, without reduction, notwithstanding any physical changes related to sea level rise”.
According to IPCC projections, millions of people are at risk of losing their place of residence, and therefore also their country and their identity for some 600,000 future “stateless climate refugees”. The coastal states have all embarked on development work to try to contain the waters. On the sidelines of COP27, the Tuvalu archipelago recalled Monday, November 7 to work on a plan with the support of the United Nations Development Program (UNDP): “Te Lafiga o Tuvalu” (the refuge of Tuvalu). For the time being, it is only a question of modeling but the plan is ambitious, providing for an elevation of the capital’s soil over 3.6 square kilometers and a relocation of the inhabitants and strategic infrastructures such as hospitals or schools. .
But these developments will probably only delay the worst. According to the World Meteorological Organization report released on November 6, l he melting of the glaciers is spectacular. Switzerland, for example, lost 6% of ice between 2021 and 2022 and overall, alpine glaciers lost between three and four meters in thickness in 2022.
In 1995, the movie water world with Kevin Costner projected such a world, transformed into an immense ocean. To survive, humans had built floating cities with the debris of the old world. “Humans are resourceful, they will find floating ways to keep living there”assures the former president of the Maldives, Mohamed Nasheed, referring to floating cities.
Live on the water? The concept is on its way despite some doubts about its viability. And precisely, in the Maldives, the government will carry out a pilot experiment: in January will be launched the site of Maldives Flotting City (MFC), a floating city made up of an assembly of platforms offering a total of 5,000 houses that can accommodate some 20,000 people. and sold around 250,000 euros per unit, 150,000 euros for an apartment [selon les données de la Banque mondiale, le salaire mensuel moyen aux Maldives en 2019 s’élevait à 806 dollars contre 906 dollars en moyenne dans le reste du monde].
The installation will take place inside a 200-hectare lagoon protected from the waves by a coral reef, 10 minutes by boat from the capital Malé. Designed by the Dutch architects of Waterstudio and carried out by the Dutch Docklands company, the project competed last March at the world real estate fair (Mipim) in Cannes (Alpes-Maritimes). “Not a luxury but a necessity”, insisted to AFP Paul van de Camp, the promoter of the project, while 80% of the territory is less than one meter above sea level. The Maldivian president believes that this project could be completed by 2027.
Another project was unveiled on April 26, 2022 at the United Nations headquarters, that of a sustainable floating city whose prototype will be tested in the port city of Busan (South Korea). This Atlantis 2.0 designed by Danish architect Bjarke Ingels and the start-up Oceanix has been named Oceanix City. Deliverable in 2025, it meets several challenges: to be sustainable and self-sufficient.
Busan’s Oceanix City will consist of six modular two-hectare hexagonal platforms that can each accommodate 300 people. Expandable, the city will be able to accommodate up to 100,000 people, according to the architect. Each “district” has an assigned role, food, habitat, research etc. with the aim of complete autonomy. Gardens and greenhouses are planned to cultivate fruits and vegetables as well as underwater farms… all the food is produced on site. A sustainable material, biorock, will be used for the construction. It’s already being used to repair damage to coral reefs because not only does it absorb minerals from seawater to naturally make a limestone coating that’s stronger than conventional concrete, but it’s also self-sufficient and self-repairing. over time. The water will be recovered from the rain or the sea, desalinated, recycled in a closed circuit, the energy will be provided by solar panels, mini-wind turbines and floating buoys, responsible for converting wave energy into electricity. On the mobility side, only bicycles, drones and 100% clean vehicles will be authorized. Finally, the waste will be automatically collected and transported for reprocessing via pipe networks. Estimated cost: nearly 630 million euros. These cities “do not consume resources, but on the contrary, allow the ocean to be regenerated”says Marc Collins Chen, co-founder and CEO of Oceanix.
By obtaining the support of UN-Habitat, the United Nations Human Settlements Programme, Marc Collins Chen wants to make sure that his project will not be swallowed up by property developers. “There is no way this initiative will turn into a scenario where the rich watch the poor suffocate on the beach,” he insists.
The question of financing the “losses and damages” caused by the impacts of global warming is one of the burning points of the COP27 in Egypt because the States most threatened do not have the resources to finance solutions such as floating cities on their own. . They are therefore calling for financial support from rich countries, responsible for global warming. The water threat is not just a few island states. The lives of nearly 1.4 billion people living on the coasts are threatened. More than 280 million people are at risk of becoming “climate refugees”. In France, nearly half a million people will no doubt be forced to abandon their place of residence, mainly in New Aquitaine and Hauts-de-France.