Second Sea

Ahead of a critical moment for global climate diplomacy, Second Sea uses data to tell the story of how rising sea levels could inundate coastal cities and at what cost – and enables people to send the bill to those most responsible.

‍

As world leaders prepared to gather at COP27, we joined forces with Adrian Lahoud, Dean of the School of Architecture at the RCA, and Sudanese diplomat Lumumba Di-Aping to provoke public conversation and meaningful policy action among the nations most responsible for the climate damage that will be caused by rising seas. 

‍

For many, climate change is a subject too vast or too abstract to apprehend – or act on. Not for the G77 group of emerging economies, whose member nations are already bearing the brunt of its impacts, despite having contributed the least to its causes. Previously chief negotiator for the G77 nations, Di-Aping sought to ensure reparations remained at the top of the conference agenda. The ‘loss and damages’ fund, for which developing nations had been campaigning since the 1990s, would be one of the most meaningful agreements to come out of COP27. 

‍

Dr Adrian Lahoud, with his researchers Sam Jacoby and Benjamin Mehigan, collated data revealing how rising seas could impact coastal cities, and created an algorithm that apportioned costs to the most polluting nations for the vast damages this would cause. Our task was to turn the data into a powerful story that would transform outrage into activism.

‍

Together with Dr Lahoud and Made by ON, we created Second Sea: an interactive platform that projects the price of damage that rising sea levels, caused by emissions-driven climate change, will cause to the world’s coastal cities. Individuals select a coastal city, climate scenario and future date to determine likely sea level rise and its financial cost. The digital ‘bill’ could then be sent to representatives of high-emitting nations at COP27, or broadcast to friends and followers. Visitors from more than 120 countries created more than 6,000 bills for damages.

‍

Despite the complexity of the data, ensuring the website experience “had the simplicity and seamlessness of an app” was vital, as Creative Developer Mike Leonard puts it. The tailor-made solution was to entirely hardcode the site in both English and Arabic, process queries using a custom database, with a bespoke API creating seamlessness between the complexity of the back-end and the immediacy of the visitor experience.

‍

The powerful stories told by the data – of soon to be inundated cities and long term economic consequences – are Second Sea’s central focus, served by restrained typography, and effortless functionality that speeds visitors towards their realisation of what’s at stake. Conceived by us, and created by Made By ON, a rising tide of ultramarine blue insidiously rises, recedes or submerges the content, evoking a sense of uncertainty and risk. 

‍

The calculator was promoted across social platforms, as well as through an arresting poster campaign which indicated future sea level rises on city streets to reveal the stakes of inaction.