'Surging seas are coming for all of us', warns UN chief

The UN chief made the comments on Tuesday in Tonga while launching the World Meteorological Organisation's (WMO)latest report on the state of the climate in the South-West Pacific.

Guterres, who is in Nuku'alofa to attend the annual Pacific Islands Forum leaders' summit, provided an update on the present-day impacts and future projections of sea-level rise - including coastal flooding - at a global and regional level, including for major coastal cities in the G20 and Pacific Small Island Developing States.

He said rising seas are a crisis "that will soon swell to an almost unimaginable scale, with no lifeboat to take us back to safety".

"If we save the Pacific, we save ourselves," he said, calling called for the global community to advance a fast and fair phase out of fossil fuels.

He said the G20, "the big emitters" to take a leading role for developed countries to honour their climate finance agreements and "massively increase finance and support for vulnerable countries".

Guterres says the ocean is overflowing and he could see changes to the Pacific region since his last visit.

"Developed countries must deliver on their finance commitments, including the commitment to double adaptation funding to at least $40 billion a year by 2025," he said.

"And with significant contributions to the new loss and damage funds is a step towards climate justice in support of vulnerable countries like the Pacific Islands."

Guterres stressed that concerted global action is needed to reduce carbon emissions and finger pointing by different nations on who has not done enough leads nowhere.

"We cannot go on blaming each other," he said.

"We absolutely need all G20 countries to come together to use the best technologies available within the G20, to use the financial resources that exist within the G20 and in multilateral development institutions and to have a concerted global action to have a drastic reduction of emissions in until 2030."

- RNZI