Seas will wash away countries in 30 years

Press, 24 February 1987, Page 33

Seas will wash away countries in 30 years

NZPA-AP Paris Within 30 years, rising seas will wash away entire countries and flood cities from Boston to Bombay, but no one seems to care, a top authority on oceans has warned.

“In Bangladesh alone, 15 million people will have to move or drown,” Stjepan Keckes said in an interview.

“It is unbelievable. Politicians don't want to worry about the long term. They won’t be around.”

Venice is already in peril, Keckes said, because “it is sinking, but also water is rising around it” Kiribati, a Pacific island nation, could disappear entirely, he said. So could the Sydney Opera House. Keckes, a flamboyant and widely respected Yugoslavian marine biologist, heads the United

Nations Environment Programme’s centre for oceans and coastal areas. He monitors regional centres from Nairobi, Kenya. He came to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation in Paris to confer with other specialists who echo his view — and his frustration that no-one seems to be paying attention.

Keckes said increasing carbon dioxide in the Earth’s atmosphere raised temperatures, melting ice and causing the “greenhouse effect.” At the same time, warmer water was expanding, raising sea levels.

Scientists fear a huge break-up of the Antarctic ice cap which might speed the process dramatically.

Keckes estimates seas will rise 1.5 metres to 3.5 metres within three decades.

Low-lying Pacific islands, such as Fiji, will lose fertile coastal lands.

Specialists warn that coastal cities everywhere will be threatened, defensive measures could run into the hundreds of billions of dollars, and the social impact could cause sharp conflicts among countries.

“Bangladesh will have to evacuate huge areas because they don’t have the money to build dykes, like the Netherlands,” Keckes said.

“But where will they go? If they invade India, who could blame them?”

Working independently, other scientists have expressed similar fears. Last year the first international symposium on "Cities on the Sea” met at Haifa, Israel.

Nicolas Fleming, of the Institute of Oceanographic Studies in Wormley, England, warned then that sections of the North Carolina and Virginia coastlines already were threatened. Fleming has studied about 1000 coastal cities which have disappeared, at least partially, since antiquity. “It is happening around us, and we can’t get anybody interested,” Keckes said.

“It is just not the kind of thing you can make into a headline. You can’t visualise it, but it is happening.” He points to the village of Argentiere, in the French Alps. Postcards of the 1920 s show a glacier surrounding the • village church. Today, apparently because of warmer temperatures, the ice has receded 200 metres up the mountain.

Measurements show a similar but less-obvious process taking place almost everywhere there is permanent ice, scientists say.

Keckes worries that little can be done about rising oceans beyond studying the phenomenon and preparing for the worst.

“The process has already started,” he said. “We might slow it down by burning less fossil fuels, but the fundamental changes have already taken place.”

Periodic measurements are important, he said, but the change will not be linear. The oceans are likely to rise at different levels each year, perhaps with sharp, sudden increases.

Related problems worsen the impact. For example, water may be ris-

ing faster than corar reefs can grow, submerging them too deeply and, in effect, drowning them. If the reefs die, countless islands will lose their natural barriers against the sea.

Water temperature changes are affecting marine life in ways which are still not clear.

“We are just starting to find out the real impact and dangers, but it is only among small groups in Scientific meetings,” Keckes said. “But no one else seems to care.”

U.N.E.P. regional centres are making careful assessments of other marine problems, such as, ’alarming levels of D.D.T.’ and other pesticides still widely used in developing countries.

“The general level of D.D.T. and lead indicate that man is capable of altering the ecosystem,” Keckes said. “This is a very dangerous sign.”

D.D.T. in the livers of Antarctic penguins shows how far contamination has carried. Scientists are beginning to monitor mussels as indicators of D.D.T. levels around the world. . Marine pollution is also a serious problem in some regions. Sewage and chemical waste treatment is protecting parts of the Mediterranean. However, pollution is worsening in much of the eastern Mediterranean.

“But pollution is mostly a short-term problem, and we can do something about it,” Keckes said. “We had better start worrying about rising oceans. We will have to face that soon, whether we want to or apt.”