Rising Sea Levels in Pacific and Indian Ocean Island Nations

Atoll Beach, Tuvalu

• Rising sea levels pose massive threats to communities and environments inhabiting island nations in the Indian and Pacific Oceans.

• Rising sea levels cause flooding which can ruin crops and community infrastructure.

• One of the main causes for rising sea levels is the melting of polar ice caps, increased CO2 output since Industrialization, etc.

• "with a sea-level rise of over 1.5 meters, hundreds of millions of people would be dead. They would simply be wiped out," President Mohamed Nasheed of the Republic of Maldives.

• An alliance has been formed between several of the worlds smallest island nations, called AOSIS (Alliance of Small Island States). 

• AOSIS consists of 43 nations that are the most at risk from rising ocean levels as a result of climate change. 
• https://www.un.org/en/chronicle/article/small-islands-rising-seas 

  NOAA Rising Sea Level Interactive Map 

The following link takes you to an interactive map that allows you to see what coast lines around the world will look like in the future as a result of rising sea levels

https://coast.noaa.gov/digitalcoast/tools/slr.html

Sea Level Rise Viewer

 Video resource on rising sea levels.

Flag of Kiribati

Small Island Nations: How Much Do You Know?

Did Humans Arrive in Micronesia Much Earlier Than We Thought? Atlas Obscura (January 3, 2023)

The Doomsday Glacier

• The collapse of the Thwaites Glacier in West Antarctica could cause sea levels to rise as much as 13 feet worldwide
  

Members: Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS)

Small Island Nations from World Ocean Observatory

Small Islands Could Deploy Lasers to Weather Climate Change from Wired, December 12, 2015

• International Year of Small Island Developing States, 2014, from the United Nations on YouTube

• Small Island Developing Nations: Voices from the Field, from the United Nations on YouTube

• Top Ten Smallest Island Countries

Nauru is the world's smallest island nation

Seychelles

Seychelles-CIA Map

115 islands, only a few inhabited, in the Indian Ocean off East Africa north of Madagascar

• 99 percent ocean/its water is 3000 times larger than its land

• Dependent on rainwater for water supply

Basic Country Facts from CIA World Facebook

Seychelles Sinks as Climate Change Advances, NPR (September, 2010)