2023 CascadingConsequences of Sinking States 137 failing to implement sufficient policies to meet their pledges made pursuant to the agreement. According to the U.N. Environment Program's Emissions Gap Report 2022, even if all states implement policies to fulfill their existing pledges, the world would be on track for a 2.6 "C increase in global temperatures by the end of the century.9 Moreover, even though a "rapid transformation of societies"2 0 would leave us a narrow window of opportunity to avoid the worst impacts of climate change, many of the ongoing changes to our environment are already "irreversible." 2 Among them is global sea level rise, which the U.N. Secretary General recently described as a "threat-multiplier." 2 As noted in the Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovern- mental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), "In the longer term, sea level is committed to rise for centuries to millennia due to continuing deep ocean warming and ice sheet melt, and will remain elevated for thousands of years."23 In its 2019 Special Report on the Ocean and Cryosphere in a Changing Cli- mate, the IPCC estimated that the global mean sea level will likely rise between 0.43 and 0.84 meters by the year 2100.24 As sea level rise does not occur uniformly across the globe, individual states may experience sea level rise that is higher than the global mean.25 In addition to variations in sea level rise, the IPCC outlined that low-lying islands are particularly vulnerable due to the compounding impacts of sea level rise, man-made changes to the environment, and demographic trends and settlement patterns. 26 The term "sinking states"27 is used in this article as a descriptive term for a discrete number of low-lying island states at risk of the erosion or submergence of a 19 U.N. ENV'T PROGRAM, THE CLOSING WINDOW: CLIMATE CRISIS CALLS FOR RAPID TRANSFORMATION OF SOCIETIES passim (2022). According to the report, if states do not implement policies to meet these commitments, existing policies have put the world on track for warming of 2.8 "C above pre-industrial levels by the end of the century. This level of warming was recently described as a "death sentence for vulnerable countries" by Ant6nio Guterres, the U.N. Secretary-General. U.N. Secretary-General, Secretary-General's Remarks to the Security Council Debate on 'Sea Level Rise: Implications for International Peace and Security' (Feb. 14, 2023), https://perma.cc/7TF5-A6XG. 20 U.N. ENv'T PROGRAM, supra note 19, passim. 21 INTERGOVERNMENTAL PANEL ON CLIMATE CHANGE [IPCC], SIXTH ASSESSMENT REPORT: SUMMARY FOR POLICYMAKERS, at B.5.4 (2021), https://perma.cc/T8VG-FXX8. 22 U.N. Secretary-General, supra note 19. On the "climate-security nexus," see, e.g., Mark P. Nevitt, The Climate-Security Nexus, AM. BAR ASS'N (Jan. 3, 2023), https://perma.cc/3HE7-757J; Mark Nevitt, Climate Change and the Specter of Statelessness, 35 GEO. ENv'T L. REv. (forthcoming 2023) (manuscript at 16-23). 23 IPCC, supra note 21, at B.5.4. 24 IPCC, SPECIAL REPORT ON THE OCEAN AND CRYOSPHERE IN A CHANGING CLIMATE 324 (2019). 25 Id. 26 Id. 27 The term "sinking states" has been used by representatives of these states, media outlets, and scholars to describe the discrete number of states that are at risk of submergence. See, e.g., Natano, supra note 3 (stating that "Tuvalu, and other low-lying atoll nations, arc sinking and our land is fast disappearing"); see also Katherine Purvis, Sinking States: The Islands Facing the Effects of Climate Change, GUARDIAN (Feb. 15, 2016), https://perma.cc/9RMG-JBSC; Patrick Sykes, Sinking States: Climate Change and the Next Refugee Crisis, FOREIGN AFFS. (Sept. 28, 2015), https://perma.cc/P7AQ-2BWC; Derek Wong, Sovereignty Sunk: The Position of Sinking States at InternationalLaw, 14 MELB. J. INT'L L. 346 passim (2013); Katrina Miriam Wyman, Sinking States, in PROPERTY IN LAND AND OTHER RESOURCES 439 passim (Daniel H. Cole & Elinor Ostrom eds., 2012). Another term that has been used to describe this category of states is "disappearing island states." E.g., Emma Allen, Climate Change and Disappearing Island States: Pursuing Remedial Territory, BRILL OPEN L. passim (2018), Electronic copy available at: https://ssrn.com/abstract=4321214