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| Planes operate at Incheon International Airport which Greenpeace Korea has projected will be flooded before 2030 as a consequence of rising sea levels caused by climate change. Korea Times file |
By Kim Se-jeong
Haeundae Beach in Busan and Incheon International Airport could disappear underwater before 2030 not if but when hit by a big rainstorm or typhoon, as a consequence of the rising sea levels caused by climate change, according to Greenpeace Korea, Thursday.
The international environmental group said flooding of that magnitude will occur once in the 2030s, but by 2050, if no action is taken, it could take place every summer.
"The region most affected by flooding will be Gyeonggi Province where 1.3 million will suffer from it," Justin Jeong, a Greenpeace campaigner, told The Korea Times. "If this flooding becomes more frequent, the nation's infrastructure will stop functioning, costing Korea a huge amount of money in repairs. This is why we need to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050."
Greenpeace Korea reached the conclusion through a simulation based on data obtained from a research paper, titled "New elevation data triple estimates of global vulnerability to sea-level rise and coastal flooding," published last November in the Nature Communications magazine.
Following Gyeonggi Province, Incheon will be the second-hardest-hit with an estimated 750,000 victims. Seoul will follow Incheon with 340,000 victims, and North Jeolla Province with 310,000 and South Chungcheong Province with 220,000 victims.
In Seoul, Gangseo-gu is likely to be the most affected with 117,000 victims, followed by Yangcheon-gu with 35,000 and Songpa-gu with 34,000 victims. In total, 5.86 percent of land in Korea will be submerged.
This has big implications for Korea which was has been ravaged by strong rainstorms over the last 10 days. According to the government, the storms took 42 lives and forced more than 14,000 to evacuate their homes. More than 9,300 hectares of land were submerged. Damage was concentrated on the southwestern and central regions. Many experts blamed climate change for the devastation.
The world is making efforts to keep the temperature rise below 1.5 degrees Celsius. To achieve that, it has to halve greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 and achieve net-zero emissions by 2050. But many experts are skeptical that goal can be reached, urging governments and civil society to fight hard to reduce the emissions.
