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STORY: UN / SEA LEVEL RISE
TRT: 04:29
SOURCE: UNIFEED
RESTRICTIONS: NONE
LANGUAGES: ENGLISH / FRENCH / NATS
DATELINE: 24, 25 SEPTEMBER 2024, NEW YORK CITY / FILE
24 SEPTEMBER 2024, NEW YORK CITY
1. Wide shot, exterior, United Nations Headquarters
25 SEPTEMBER 2024, NEW YORK CITY
2. Wide shot, conference room
3. Wide shot, dais
4. SOUNDBITE (English) António Guterres, Secretary-General, United Nations:
“Our world is in dangerous waters. Scientists tell us that the global sea level is now rising faster than at any time in the last 3,000 years and accelerating – the rate of increase has more than doubled since the 1990s. They tell us the cause is clear: Greenhouse gases – overwhelmingly from burning fossil fuels – are heating our planet, expanding seawater, and melting ice. But they cannot tell us where this will end. That is down to world leaders today. Their choices will determine the scale, pace, and impact of future sea level rise.”
5. Wide shot, dais
6. SOUNDBITE (French) António Guterres, Secretary-General, United Nations:
“This situation represents for some an existential threat: Entire islands lost; Coastal communities destroyed as land becomes uninhabitable and uninsurable. Massive population movements can put pressure on the limited resources of neighbouring regions – and worsen already dramatic situations.”
7. Wide shot, conference room
8. SOUNDBITE (English) António Guterres, Secretary-General, United Nations:
“Only drastic action to adapt can keep people safe from rising waters. Everyone must be protected by an alert system by 2027 – in line with our Early Warnings for All initiative. And all countries must deliver new national climate action plans – or Nationally Determined Contributions – well ahead of COP30 next year. These must align with 1.5 degrees, cover all sectors of the economy, and put us on track to phase out fossil fuels, fast and fairly.”
9. Wide shot, dais
10. SOUNDBITE (English) Feleti Teo, Prime Minister, Tuvalu:
“For small island developing countries, sea level rise poses an existential threat to our economies, to our culture and heritage, and to the land that nourished our ancestors for centuries. The existential threat we face is not of our making, but it will remake us. In this century, many of the small island states and low-lying countries will lose considerable territory to rising sea, with some like my country, running the risk of becoming largely uninhabitable.”
11. Wide shot, conference room
24 SEPTEMBER 2024, NEW YORK CITY
12. Med shot, the Director of NASA’s Sea Level Change Team, Nadya Vinogradova Shiffer, speaking
13. Pan right, Vinogradova Shiffer and team
14. SOUNDBITE (English) Nadya Vinogradova Shiffer, Director, Sea Level Change Team, National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA):
““Sea level rise is truly a planetary-scale problem. We see prevailing expansion of Earth’s oceans everywhere on our planet.”
15. Wide shot, NASA display
16. SOUNDBITE (English) Nadya Vinogradova Shiffer, Director, Sea Level Change Team, National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA):
“We've worked with different UN organizations to bring awareness about this issue, to produce technical assessment for the Pacific Island nations. And it was very rewarding to see that sea level rise is being elevated on the international stage of discussions of different global crisis that humanity faces, including climate crisis.”
17. Wide shot, NASA display
FILE - 23 NOVEMBER 2023, ANTARCTICA
18. Med shot, Secretary-General António Guterres and Chilean Navy officer
19. Wide shot, iceberg
20. Various shots, Guterres and Chilean President Gabriel Boric on a Zodiac boat
21. Various shot, aerial views of penguin colony and Antarctic coastline
22. Zoom out, Guterres surrounded by penguins
Secretary-General António Guterres today (25 Sep) said “our world is in dangerous waters,” and explained that the global sea level is now rising faster than at any time in the last 3,000 years as greenhouse gases are heating our planet, expanding seawater and melting ice.”
Addressing a high-level plenary meeting on the sidelines of the General Assembly’s General Debate, Guterres said scientists “cannot tell us where this will end. That is down to world leaders today. Their choices will determine the scale, pace, and impact of future sea level rise.”
This situation, he said, “represents for some an existential threat: entire islands lost; coastal communities destroyed as land becomes uninhabitable and uninsurable. Massive population movements can put pressure on the limited resources of neighbouring regions – and worsen already dramatic situations.”
The Secretary-General said, “only drastic action to adapt can keep people safe from rising waters,” and stressed that “all countries must deliver new national climate action plans – or Nationally Determined Contributions – well ahead of COP30 next year. These must align with 1.5 degrees, cover all sectors of the economy, and put us on track to phase out fossil fuels, fast and fairly.”
Addressing the meeting, the Prime Minister of Tuvalu, Feleti Teo, said, “for small island developing countries, sea level rise poses an existential threat to our economies, to our culture and heritage, and to the land that nourished our ancestors for centuries. The existential threat we face is not of our making, but it will remake us. In this century, many of the small island states and low-lying countries will lose considerable territory to rising sea, with some like my country, running the risk of becoming largely uninhabitable.”
In an interview, the Director of NASA’s Sea Level Change Team, Nadya Vinogradova Shiffer said, “sea level rise is truly a planetary-scale problem. We see prevailing expansion of Earth’s oceans everywhere on our planet.”
Vinogradova Shiffer said, “we've worked with different UN organizations to bring awareness about this issue, to produce technical assessment for the Pacific Island nations. And it was very rewarding to see that sea level rise is being elevated on the international stage of discussions of different global crisis that humanity faces, including climate crisis.”
The overall theme of today’s high-level meeting was “Addressing the threats posed by sea-level rise.” Close to one billion people living in low-lying coastal zones will be directly affected by rising sea levels and climate impacts.
