Will rising sea levels wipe countries off the map?
The Inquiry
BBC
4.6 • 1.7K Ratings
🗓️ 8 December 2022
⏱️ 24 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Small island nations are facing an existential threat. It’s predicted that by 2100, Tuvalu, Kiribati, the Maldives and many others will be underwater, because of rising sea levels and increasingly extreme weather events.
At the recent COP27 conference in Egypt. The most polluting industrialised countries agreed in principle to set up a “loss and damage” fund, effectively recognising that low-lying islands are bearing the brunt of climate change.
But is their loss inevitable? Could traditional sea wall defences hold back the waters, or are there more effective solutions? Will entire communities need to be moved to higher ground, or even entire nations transplanted to safer locations?
This week on the Inquiry, we’re asking: will rising sea levels wipe countries off the map?
Presented by Charmaine Cozier Produced by Ravi Naik Researcher Anoushka Mutanda-Dougherty Editor Tara McDermott Technical producer Richard Hannaford Broadcast Coordinator Brenda Brown
(a woman in a lagoon in the threatened coral atoll nation of Tuvalu. Credit: Mario Tama /Getty Images)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to The Inquiry, I'm Sharma Inkosia, each week one question for expert witnesses |
| 0:06.0 | and an answer. |
| 0:10.3 | January 2014, it's a sad historic day for a small Fujian village. |
| 0:16.2 | After years of slowly sinking underwater, Rani Douglas is the first Pacific island settlement |
| 0:22.4 | to relocate because of rising sea levels. |
| 0:26.1 | It's forcing 150 residents to move nearly 2 km in land to new homes built on higher ground |
| 0:34.4 | to escape the coastal flooding. |
| 0:37.2 | Eight years later and the situation in Fujian has intensified, |
| 0:41.4 | the government's highlighted 42 villages across dozens of its many islands for potential relocation |
| 0:48.1 | within the next 5 to 10 years. |
| 0:50.8 | The sea is swallowing land up or making it unfit to live on in many places around the world, |
| 0:57.6 | so this week we're asking, will rising sea levels wipe countries off the map. |
| 1:07.6 | Part 1, a matter of survival. |
| 1:11.3 | I'm Tuvalun, my parents, my grandparents, my ancestors are from here. |
| 1:26.3 | My name is Simon Koffe. |
| 1:28.2 | I'm the Minister for Justice Communications and Foreign Affairs for the Government of Tuvalun. |
| 1:34.2 | Tuvalun is one of the smallest countries in the world. |
| 1:42.2 | In terms of land area, we're about 27 square kilometres. |
| 1:46.6 | We're low-lying atolls with the highest point above sea level at around 4 metres. |
| 1:52.9 | So we're in the middle of the Pacific Ocean and we are at the forefront of the impacts of climate change. |
| 1:58.2 | You know, in fact, two of the islands that form the lagoon on the capital where I live on, |
| 2:02.7 | I have been washed away and I think things are just getting worse as time progresses. |
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