Climate Change and Sea Level Rise

Abstract

The birth and death of States present parallel inquiries in international law: each event requires an analysis of the characteristics of statehood, and each raises important questions of rights and obligations.1 A State is never static, and one can examine at different times its birth, its death and/ or its rebirth, the nature of the State and the consequences that flow from such transformative events.2 Such an inquiry gives rise to practical questions: Is a State that is extinguished but reborn the same State that existed at the time of its extinction, even if it emerges years or decades later? And if it is not the same State, what is it, and what are its rights and obligations? The global impacts of climate change and rising sea levels pose serious threats to low-lying island States which may become uninhabitable due to the displacement of entire populations and potential complete disappearance of habitable territory under 1 The Montevideo Convention provides the most frequently cited definition of a State. Article 1 lists four basic elements required for statehood: (1) a permanent population; (2) a defined territory; (3) government; and (4) capacity to enter into relations with other States. Montevideo Convention on Rights and Duties of States, adopted

The landlocked ocean: landlocked states in BBNJ negotiations and the impact of fixed land-sea relations in global ocean governance

“…Oceans also reveal a disconnect between socio-political borders and the dynamic ecological criteria necessary for effective management (Dallimer and Strange, 2015;Harvey et al, 2017). Island and archipelagic communities face challenges such as ambulatory baselines and disappearing islands due to climate change eroding the physical, biological, and legal foundations of borders (Heidar, 2004(Heidar, , 2020Mayer, 2020;Sammler, 2020a;Lee and Bautista, 2021). In ocean management, nomadic and indigenous groups often resist established systems (Refisch and Jenson, 2016;Levin, 2020;Nurmi, 2020;Wille et al, 2021), especially in ABNJ, where multiple stakeholders and jurisdictions overlap and the fixed classifications become problematic, necessitating a more flexible and adaptive approach.…”

Coastal Waveform Retracking for Synthetic Aperture Altimeters Using a Multiple Optimization Parabolic Cylinder Algorithm

“…Coastal areas are among the most economically developed regions in the world, with approximately 40% of the world's population living within 100 km of the coast and over 600 million people living at elevations of 10 m or less above sea level [2]. Since the Industrial Revolution, environmental pollution and carbon emissions have led to global warming and a rise in global sea levels [3], which pose a great threat to human survival. The situation is more severe in the last three decades.…”