Seychelles’ Foreign Minister, Barry Faure, told the UN General Assembly on 24 September that rising seas are already shaping how his country builds, invests and protects its coastline, and that climate finance is not reaching small islands in a form they can use. The same day, UN member states adopted a declaration on sea level rise. AFP reported that it passed unanimously.
The text settles two questions that island states have pressed for years. It says maritime zones stay in place even if coastlines recede. It also says a state does not automatically lose its statehood when it loses land. For a country whose wealth lies mostly at sea, that second point is far from abstract.
An African country helped write it. Cabo Verde’s ambassador to the UN, Tania Romualdo, co-facilitated the negotiations with Australia’s ambassador, James Martin Larsen. The four-page declaration rests on four pillars: science and data; adaptation, finance and resilience; livelihoods and heritage; and the legal dimensions of sea level rise.
Seychelles shows why the maritime-zone language matters. The country has 115 islands, and 74 of them are low-lying coral islands, according to the Nairobi Convention’s country profile. Its land area is only about 455 square kilometres. Its exclusive economic zone covers roughly 1.34 million square kilometres, nearly 3,000 times as much. Tourism and tuna fishing anchor the economy, and Port Victoria is a prominent tuna transshipment port. Faure said these maritime rights are directly tied to livelihoods, national development and long-term economic security.
The legal footing was laid earlier. In July 2025, the International Court of Justice found unanimously that the disappearance of one element of a state does not necessarily end its statehood. The International Law Commission’s final report in 2025 said there is strong support among states for continuity of statehood. As a political declaration rather than a treaty, the new text gets its force from consensus, not enforcement.
Finance is where it will be tested. Faure said adaptation funding must be “adequate, predictable, accessible, concessional” and must better reflect vulnerability. That last phrase carries weight for Seychelles, which international lenders classify as a high-income economy. That status can limit access to cheap financing even though its islands are exposed. Small island states have long pushed for a vulnerability-based measure instead. The declaration names adaptation and finance as a pillar. Whether that becomes money is the open question.
The physical numbers explain the urgency. Global sea levels rose almost six millimetres in 2024, the largest annual increase on record. AFP reported they could climb a metre or more by the end of the century without drastic action. Each centimetre of rise pushes the shoreline back about a metre, according to catastrophe analyst Tom Mortlock of Aon. A flood that strikes once in 50 years today could arrive every three or four years if seas rise by half a metre. UN Secretary-General António Guterres said countries and cultures cannot be allowed to “vanish beneath the waves.”
For Seychelles and other African island states, including Cabo Verde, Comoros, Mauritius and São Tomé and Príncipe, the declaration strengthens the legal argument. The financing argument is still open. Afrikeye’s earlier look at what Africa could take home from New York covers the wider UN agenda, and our Politics coverage continues to track it.
