As the Paris Agreement on climate change comes into effect,
many people are left wondering if it’s already too late to save
many of the world’s vulnerable low-lying coastal communities.
The science shows that sea levels worldwide have been rising
at a rate of 3.5 millimetres per year since the early 1990s. This
rising sea level is directly linked to global climate change due
to three important factors: the warming of the oceans, or
thermal expansion; the melting of glaciers; and ice loss
from Greenland and Antarctica.
A recent study from the Intergovernmental Panel on
Climate Change (IPCC) predicts that the oceans will have
risen between 0.8 and two metres by the year 2100. More dire
estimates, including a complete meltdown of the Greenland
ice sheet, push sea level rise to seven metres. This becomes
particularly frightening for the approximately 150 million
people living in low-lying coastal areas that will either be
submerged, or exposed to chronic flooding, owing to even a
small increase in sea levels.
According to Climate Central, a nonprofit news
organisation that analyses and reports on climate science,
around nine million people in Thailand alone – approximately
13 percent of the population – will be affected by sea level
rise in the coming years. Bangkok, a city sometimes called
“the Venice of the East”, faces the threat of chronic flooding
as rising sea levels and sinking land threaten to submerge the
capital in the coming decades.A Buddhist temple stands on the frontlines
of climate change, weathering the destruction
caused by rising water levels. For one monk,
it’s sink or swim
thailand
khun samut chinright Monks pray at Wat
Khun Samut Trawat. After
the temple was flooded, the
monks decided not to move
but to fight back against the
rising tide