Swell AI Transcript: HTPTOE1474CanAStateBeAStateIfSeaLevelRiseTakesOver.mp3

00:00 SPEAKER_00 What happens when your land disappears? The place you live on, where your house resides, where your kids play. What happens if all that is gone? What happens to you? What happens to your land? What happens to your country? What happens to your nation? It's a question that here in Canada, we haven't really had to answer too much. Certain places are more vulnerable than others. However, as a country, we're going to be here for a long time. But there are other nations out there, small island nations, who are facing a very urgent need to answer these questions of what happens to their nation if sea level rise and storm surges takes over their land. Do they become a nation? Do they still become a small island state? We're going to find out all these questions and what happens and what people are talking about and where that progress is being made and where it's not being made on this episode of the HMD. This is the HMD Podcast. Let's start the show. Hey everybody, welcome back to another exciting episode of the HMD Podcast. I am your host Andrew Lewin. This is the podcast where you find out what's happening with the ocean, how you can speak up for the ocean and what you can do to live for a better ocean by taking action. On today's episode, first of all, I just want to say happy Canada Day and happy Independence Day to Canadians as well as my American friends. It's a holiday here. I am actually coming back from a cottage or on my way back from a cottage or maybe thinking of coming back from a cottage at this point. When you're listening to this on Monday, July 4th, I celebrate Canada Day with some friends that we go away to their cottage every year with the families. It's just a great time to just spend with people and spend with families. Obviously, every nation has their abilities to improve in the way they manage their people. But it's also a nice time to just celebrate because it is a holiday and celebrate our country because we definitely live in good times right now, mostly from a Canadian perspective anyway. Obviously, we need to do a lot of improvement, but we are in a decent place as a country and I'm very thankful for that. Not a lot of countries are in a good place. There are war-torn areas, there's rebellions, there's indoctrinations, there's dictatorship and all that crazy political stuff that can really upheave. Countries and people and the way they live their lives and their ability to be free and their ability to do and live the way they want. One thing that's also impacting a lot of small nations is sea level rise. It's something that we don't talk a lot about. I feel as though a lot of people when they hear sea level rise and they're not necessarily involved in ocean conservation or involved in climate change or just know a lot about it. When somebody says sea level rise, they'll be like, well, what does it matter if the sea across the world, across the globe, raises one meter? Or what happens if that increases? It's not going to be a big deal to us for a lot of the people that I speak to. And I hear that a lot and I'm just like, what about other nations? What about other nations where their sea level rise, the highest point is two meters? Or the highest point is a meter, meter and a half? They're struggling right now. They may not be struggling right now in terms of like their land could be safe right now. There have been nations that had to move because of sea level rise, because of constant flooding due to storm surges, because of a lack of sort of coastal protection that they weren't able to put in for a number of different reasons. They had to move and it's a problem. Imagine you've been on an island or you've been in one area for thousands of years. And then all of a sudden the ocean is just like, nope, we're going to take care of this for you. It's not even your fault. It's not even your nation's fault. A lot of it is due to climate change, which is caused by a lot of the developed countries around the world, including Canada, including the US, China, India, a lot of the developed countries out there that are pumping greenhouse gases into the air like it's nobody's business. And it's affecting a lot of other people and a lot of other people around the world. And we don't see that. We don't see that on a daily basis. We don't hear from them on a regular basis because of a lot of just suppression of the voices. Obviously, that's not fair. Right. And I feel like when I talk about how to protect the ocean, when I talk about the actions you can take to live for a better ocean, it's not just the ocean that surrounds your country or that surrounds you. It's the ocean that surrounds everybody. We need to think of as a collective and a human species. There are people that live in all parts around the world, and some of those people are struggling right now. They're struggling to be like, hey, what happens if we lose our land? What happens to the state of us? What happens to our nation if we lose our land? A lot of these small island states, as an example, the small island state of Tuvalu, which is in the Pacific. It is an atoll. And there's a satellite image on the link that I'm going to provide where I got this article from The Guardian. And you look at the land pieces and it's not very big. It's a solid view of Funafuti. It's an atoll on which the capital of the island nation of Tuvalu is located. And it's very narrow. And there's not a lot of land already. But they've had a nation there that's been there for hundreds of years. And they're in trouble if they constantly see their coastline being eaten away. Right. It's a huge struggle. And you just kind of have to think of what constitutes a nation? Where is that definition? We all think, hey, we have these definitions here. I know Canada is a nation. I know it's a sovereign country. We have that. But what actually constitutes an actual nation? And I think for a lot of these states, they're looking at their definition. They're saying, wait a minute. I need to… Where do we go from here if we don't have a nation? What happens to us? Some of the questions that are being asked here in this article, it was at a conference on this topic in Fiji. The Prime Minister of the Cook Islands, Mark Brown, framed this debate in a series of existential questions. He says, and I quote, taken away from them. These questions are difficult but real. They require solutions. Right. These are general questions that people have. It's a very real thing that people are going through. And I hate to see that people have to go through this. Right. Here I am in Canada, surrounded by the Great Lakes, you know, where I can go about my business during the day and I'm okay. I'll be okay. But a lot of other people are not. You know, they have these worries about sort of what are they going to do? You know, very different questions, you know, that can cause a lot of anxiety within a people. You know, and this is why for one of the definitions of statehood under international law was reflected in the Montevideo Convention. And here's the four criteria. A physical territory, population, government, and the capacity to enter into relations with other countries. Right. So imagine that. So Simon Coffey, I think I'm pronouncing that properly, the Foreign Minister of Tuvalu, you know, said here, he says, if we were to take that definition, Tuvalu could possibly lose its status as a state. If we lose our physical territory or we are forced to relocate to a different location. So we are just imagining the worst case scenario. If it does come to that, we would want the world to continue to recognize our statehood as being permanent. And so what happens if that happens? If they lose their land because it's constantly being flooded, what happens to their nation? What happens to their statehood? According to the definition under the international law, they lose that land. They lose that statehood, but they want to be recognized. So it's going to require looking at this international law and the definition to say, are we going to allow nations to keep their statehood? Are we going to allow nations to keep their identity? Or are they just going to have to move and formulate, you know, and sort of adapt to another statehood? That's a huge problem. That's going to cause a lot of conflict, you know, in future times. And now let's talk about, you know, the sea level rise. According to the IPCC reports that have been coming out, there was a Robert E. Kopp, the nurse sciences professor at Rutgers University in New Jersey, and one of the lead authors of the IPCC report on global sea level rise said that the country like Tuvalu, which has an average elevation of two meters, was unlikely to be completely flooded by the end of the 22nd century. That's good news. The possible collapse of the giant Thuades Glacier in Antarctica could bring that forward as it would add 1.5 meters to the ocean heights. Now, remember all these articles that I've been talking about and that you've probably been seeing where ice sheets in the Arctic and Antarctica have been melting and going into the water? Those are contributing to sea level rise and they're giant. I think sometimes when we hear that, we're like, oh, look at that. That's amazing. We see the videos of these glaciers falling and these ice sheets falling into the water. That's contributing to sea level rise. Right. Now, looking at Thuades Glacier in Antarctica and it actually melting and going into the water and adding 1.5 meters, that doesn't happen overnight. That could take decades. The more immediate risk, says Robert E. Cobb, was from storm surges. It's not just sea level rise, but when a place gets flooded multiple times a year. This view was echoed by Peter Girard of Climate Central, who said floods would hit long before total inundation. It could become impossible to live along a coastline without protection. It's not just the fact that sea level rise will just take over the island in decades, where it will be completely submerged forever. It's the constant flooding. You can't live in an area that gets constantly flooded. Even if people are reinforcing their coastlines with concrete flood barriers, that doesn't happen. It's only a partial defense. That will eventually diminish. That will eventually get taken over. Just over time. It's vulnerable to tsunamis and other big flooding events. Also, there's groundwater upsurges. You have to think of a lot of things when it comes down to flooding, can get quite complex, depending on the area. These threats are real. These threats are happening to a lot of small island states. The conversation is not happening a lot on a main stage. This is why when we talk about Upwell, when we talk about these conferences where they're bringing people to the stage and providing them a platform so that they can speak and talk about their experiences, their involvement in their regions of the world, their islands of the world. It's important to listen. It's important to hear their voices to find out what's happening. Here in Canada and here in the US, we need more urgency in doing what we can to lower our impact on climate change, our contribution on climate change. A lot of the times I can walk out the door, I see pickup trucks using a lot of fuel for no real reason but other than to have a pickup truck, to be honest. Not judging, but just saying. Looking at everybody with plastic water bottles and these sugar water bottles and all this kind of stuff. And it's just like we're just going on as if everything is just happening on our own. And of course, we all have to take care of ourselves and take care of our own country. But then there's the fact of what about all the other people that we're causing this to happen? We have an ownership to take. We have to take ownership in how we're affecting the planet. And if we don't do that, then we're not going to be in good shape for the future. It's definite. It's just going to happen. And so I want this to be sort of an episode where you just reflect on how is climate change affecting you but how is climate change affecting the world? Right? It's not something that just is an easy fix, but it's something that we have to do more and faster. All these politicians that come out and be like, oh, we're doing this in time. We have to pressure them to do more. We have to. The planet relies on us. There are people that we may not have ever met or never will meet. They rely on us. Their homes are literally being moved or submerged on a regular basis. Right? It's not to just take it on all yourself. We have to take it on as a global community. As something that we can't do ourselves. It can't just be one country, one nation. It has to be everybody. So think about that as you take… I've done it too. I've done it. We're like, every day you're like, oh, it's starting tomorrow. Yeah, I got this water bottle that's made of plastic that was made from petroleum products and things like that. That's okay. I needed the water. I'll get it tomorrow. I'll start again tomorrow. Nobody's perfect. I'm not judging. This is not a judgment. I do the same thing. But when I see articles like this, it makes me think of it more to say we need to do better. We need to bring in faster policies that will work faster, that will be implemented right away, that are transparent so that people can track. That's what we need to do. That's my call to action. I would love to hear what you think we should do to help these small nations. I'd love to hear you. This is a community. It's not just me talking out to you. I'd love to hear your thoughts. And maybe I'll read them out on the next episode. Right? Whether you want me to say your name or not, that's fine. Or on a future episode. But let's have a conversation about that. You can DM me at howtoprotecttheocean.com. That's at howtoprotecttheocean.com, all one word, on Instagram. I'd love to hear from you. Maybe we can have a better conversation about this. But thank you again. If you want to talk about that as your conservation journey, just click on the link. There's a Calendly link that will schedule an interview with me and we will get you on the podcast to talk about that. Lots of conversations to happen. You just need to click those links. Anyway, that's it for me today. Thank you so much for joining us on this episode of the How to Protect the Ocean. I love you guys. Honestly, this has been such a great time and I'm looking forward to continuing. Just to let you know, June 22nd was my ninth year anniversary of doing this podcast, of publishing episodes on this podcast. It's been quite a journey. I look forward to more years, more than another nine years to doing this as I love podcasting and I love talking to all of you and hearing from all of you. I want to thank you again for continuing to join. If you want to share this episode with somebody that you think will benefit from it, please do. That's how I grow. That's how the show grows its audience and gets more and more people involved. Thank you so much for joining me on this episode of the How to Protect the Ocean podcast. Have a great day. We'll talk to you next time. And happy conservation.