1
26
Second Sea
Specialism description

#0000FF

#ffffff

Second Sea

An interactive calculator for reparations owed by the biggest polluters

Second Sea is an online interactive platform for projecting loss and damage for coastal cities caused by rising sea levels that result from human-induced climate change. Its launch coincided with COP27, held in Egypt.

Second Sea assigns a share of future loss and damage for coastal cities according to the cumulative historical CO2 contribution of each nation up to the present. It generates a nationally itemised invoice showing the proportion of loss and damage owed by each nation to the coastal city in question if contributions continue in their current proportion.

Second Sea seeks to stimulate debates about the financial aspect of reparations processes while drawing on leading models of sea-level rise and projections of loss and damage to coastal cities. As part of an integrated campaign, the Second Sea posters and business cards were designed to amplify the message.

Set at ground level, the posters' flood blue acts as a 1:1 scale measure indicating how much higher the sea level will be for that particular city. Call-to-action business cards were distributed at COP27. As a simple metaphor, the cards were individually dipped in ink to help visualise the sea level rise.

SecondSea.world has been created by Adrian Lahoud, Sam Jacoby, and Benjamin Mehigan from the School of Architecture at the Royal College of Art working with Lumumba Di-Aping. Second Sea was brought to life through a collaborative design and development process by Accept & Proceed and ON, The project is supported by research funding from the Royal College of Art. Arabic translation by The Archilogue.