Why in news?

Recently, the UN General Assembly adopted its first-ever declaration on rising sea levels, which pose an existential threat to populations worldwide.

The declaration addresses both the loss of territory faced by vulnerable island nations and the need for countries to build sea-level rise projections into coastal infrastructure planning — the latter being an area where India has significant work to do.

What’s in Today’s Article?

• The Scale of the Problem
• Can a Country Survive Losing Its Territory?
• What India Gains?
• Is India's Own Coast Ready?
• The Regulatory Gap
• Who the Declaration Leaves Out?
• What India Should Do Before 2030

The Scale of the Problem

• Sea-level rise has been "accelerating," in the declaration's own words.
  • The global rate of rise more than doubled: from 2.1 mm/year (1993–2002) to 4.7 mm/year (2015–2024), as per the World Meteorological Organization.
  • In 2024 alone, the sea rose 6 mm — the largest annual increase on record.
• Future projections (from 'Surging Seas in a Warming World', a 2024 UN Secretary-General's Climate Action Team brief):
  • Lowest-emissions path: Global sea level rises ~38 cm by 2100 above early-2000s levels.
  • High-emissions path: Rise could reach ~77 cm.
  • Crucially, seas will keep rising for centuries to millennia, even if the world reaches net zero.

Can a Country Survive Losing Its Territory?

• This is the central legal question the declaration attempts to settle.
• Under the 1933 Montevideo Convention, a state is defined by four criteria:
  • a permanent population,
  • a defined territory,
  • a government, and
  • the capacity to enter relations with other states.
• If rising seas swallow a state's territory or make it uninhabitable, does statehood survive? The declaration's answer: Yes
• It affirms a "presumption in favour of continued statehood" — such a country keeps its sovereignty, rights, and UN seat.
• Crucially, it also keeps its nautical boundaries, even as the coastline physically retreats. These include:
  • The Territorial Sea — extending 12 nautical miles (~22.2 km) from the coast.
  • The Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) — extending up to ~370 km, within which a country holds exclusive rights over natural resources.
• On Emissions and Adaptation: The declaration calls adaptation and mitigation "essential" but leaves actual emission-cut negotiations to the UN climate convention and the Paris Agreement.
• On Displaced People: It asks countries to respect the human rights of those who lose homes, encourages strengthened international cooperation, and supports voluntary choices and "mobility with dignity."
• A Real Example Already Underway: By December 2025, more than a third of Tuvalu's 11,000-strong population had applied for climate visas to migrate to Australia under a bilateral treaty.

What India Gains?

• India welcomed the declaration and backed stable maritime zones and continuity of statehood.
• It also reaffirmed "common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities" — the principle that all countries must act on climate change, but those who caused more pollution and can afford more should contribute more.
• India's Direct Stake
  • A 2023–24 remeasurement counts 1,298 offshore islands/islets and a coastline of 11,098 km.
  • Lakshadweep and the Andaman and Nicobar Islands extend India's maritime boundaries deep into the Arabian Sea and Bay of Bengal.
  • A pledge to keep nautical boundaries fixed therefore protects India's own waters, not just Pacific nations'.
• Diplomatic Continuity
  • The vote extends India's ongoing engagement with island nations — via the Forum for India–Pacific Islands Cooperation (set up with 14 Pacific countries in 2014) and the Infrastructure for Resilient Island States initiative (launched at the 2021 Glasgow climate summit).

Is India's Own Coast Ready?

• The National Centre for Coastal Research tracked India's mainland shoreline from 1990 to 2016 and found about a third of it eroding.
  • Nationally, losses and gains are roughly balanced: 234 sq km lost, 231 sq km gained elsewhere.
  • But losses are concentrated: nearly 400 km of coast is retreating by more than 5 metres/year, and another 225 km by 3–5 metres/year.
  • West Bengal alone has over 170 km in the fastest-eroding category — about a third of its entire coast.

The Regulatory Gap

• Under the 2019 Coastal Regulation Zone (CRZ) notification, the "no-build" strip is:
  • 50 metres wide in densely populated rural areas (once a state's coastal plan is approved).
  • 200 metres elsewhere.
• Both are measured from the high-tide line — defined as where the highest spring tide reaches today.
• The problem: On a stretch losing 5 metres/year, a house built 50 metres from today's high-tide line would reach the water's edge in about 10 years. Even the 200-metre strip would last only about 40 years.
• A Better Tool Exists But isn't Fully Used
  • The Survey of India has mapped a "hazard line" incorporating sea-level rise and shoreline change, shared with coastal states.
  • The 2019 rules use it only as a disaster management planning tool, while the actual no-build strip is still measured from today's tide line — not the projected future one.

Who the Declaration Leaves Out?

• In the Sundarbans, the loss has already happened.
  • Ghoramara island shrank from ~7.2 sq km (1972) to 3.6 sq km (2022).
  • Families who had earlier moved there from neighbouring Lohachara (which disappeared in the early 2000s) were displaced again within a decade — relocated to marginal land without secure tenure or livelihood support.
• The Legal Gap: Indian law has no clear category for people who gradually lose land to erosion; each relocation is handled case by case.
  • A 2025 review in Frontiers in Marine Science estimates 45 million Indians will be at risk from sea-level rise by 2050, and notes India "still lacks comprehensive legislation" on this.
• A Model Worth Following: Fiji wrote planned relocation into its Climate Change Act (2021), backed by a trust fund.

What India Should Do Before 2030?

• Measure the no-build strip from the hazard line, or widen it by the local erosion rate, starting with fastest-retreating stretches.
• Enact a law for slow-onset displacement, ensuring relocated families receive land title and livelihood support.
• Keep pressing on climate finance. UNEP estimates developing countries need over $310 billion/year by 2035 for adaptation, against just $26 billion in international public adaptation finance (2023).
  • At Baku (2024), India called the new $300 billion/year goal "too little and too distant" — a position it should press again at COP31 in Antalya.
• The declaration schedules the next high-level meeting on sea-level rise by September 2030 — giving India four years to act.