are not sustainably managed (UNEP 2019a). Furthermore, microplastics and antibiotics pollution is increasingly deteriorating the health of marine animals, in many cases causing species and ecosystem collapse.
Then there is sea level rise: global warming has caused temperatures to increase rapidly and snow and ice to melt (back in 2019, more than 70 per cent of the planet’s freshwater was still locked up in ice). Natural coastal protection zones like coral reefs are disappearing. The situation is chaotic in coastal communities. They are trying to protect themselves with seawalls and even leaving their homes to move inland. Imagine what it will be like when sea level rises by 1.2 metres by the end of the century (UNEP 2019a).
Did you know?
• While ‘the path we are on’ is based on the best science available, ‘tipping points’ add large amounts of uncertainty to how the future will play out. Scientists have identified that global warming exceeding 2°C could trigger us into a “Hothouse Earth” pathway in which dangerous feedbacks lock-in catastrophic warming of 4-5 °C. A notable tipping point and feedback loop is the melting of the West Antarctic ice sheet - after a certain extent of warming, the
entire ice sheet will start melting and it will not be able to recover, leading to several meters of sea level rise. Recent research has pointed out that these tipping points could be triggered even with 1 or 2 °C of warming, meaning that we may have already locked-in significant environmental change.