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WHO’s climate change report points to Guyana’s vulnerability to rising sea levels
Kaieteur News – Guyana is particularly vulnerable to rising sea level stemming from climate change, plus regional shifts in the height of the sea. A 2020 World Health Organization (WHO) report on climate change explains.
An Aerial shot of the impact of flooding along Guyana’s coastland.
According to the report, Guyana’s initial national communication to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) states that the sea level, along the Atlantic Coast, is projected to rise by about 40 cm by the end of the twenty first century. This means the sea is rising at a rate of two–four millimetres each year, counting the entire century.
The report explained that “From 1951 to 1979, sea level off Guyana’s coast rose at a rate of some five times the global average (0.4 inch, or 10.2 millimetres per year)— and around six times the twentieth century average or three times the 1993 to 2009 annual average.”
Moreover, the document states that the contribution of melt-water from land ice would increase the rate of rising sea level to approximately 60 cm by the end of the next century.
Additionally, a vulnerability and adaptation assessment report in 2019, focusing on the calibration and assembly of global estimation of sea level rise, which was carried out by a continuous series of satellite altimeter sea level measurements, revealed that the sea level has been raising over the past 17 years at a mean rate of 3.4 mm per year.
The report further states that there is considerable inter-annual variation due to El Niño and La Niña (ENSO) processes —warm and cool phases of a recurring climate pattern across the tropical Pacific, so the rate average over a four-year period can be significantly different.
Impacts of sea level rise include coastal erosion, (flooding) ecosystem disruption, higher storm surges, population displacement, water contamination and disruption, as well as increase adverse effects on the mental health of the population.
This is not the first time that Guyana’s vulnerability to sea level rise has been documented. Last year, a mini-documentary on the natural phenomenon of erosion and climate change produced by REEL Guyana and its founder, Alex Arjoon, spoke to the vulnerability of Guyana’s low-lying coastal region.
In his production, Arjoon talks of himself starting a national conversation about the vulnerability of Guyana’s low-lying coastal region among the younger generation.
Arjoon explains that Guyana’s coastline is part of the much bigger ecosystem of the continental coastline, from the mouth of the Amazon in Brazil to the Orinoco in Venezuela; and it faces this constant cycle of erosion and accretion.
He noted that Guyana’s natural sea defenses are placed at risk by the erosion of the coastline, and that could only redound to the detriment of the communities scattered across the low-lying areas.
He explained, too, that while efforts have been made to grow and maintain the mangroves on Guyana’s coastline, there is only so much that that can hold when erosion takes its toll.
“Over the years, we have seen a significant decrease in mangrove forests, leaving our coasts directly exposed to wave impact,” Arjoon said; adding that, in conjunction with erosion of the coast’s mud deposits, there is another issue, which is the constant and unprecedented melting of ice and snow in colder regions, caused by a frightening gradual rise in global temperatures.
“This melted water is discharged into our oceans. Global sea levels are predicted to rise between one and four feet by the end of this century. And with every millimeter, Guyana’s border wall approaches a point of irreversible collapse,” he stated.
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