Tuvalu plans for its own disappearance
Is a country still a country if it sinks?
FOR OVER three decades the Pacific island country of Tuvalu has implored industrialised countries to cut their greenhouse-gas emissions. For over three decades global temperatures have ticked up. Tuvalu’s government warns that its territory could slip underwater by the end of the century. “It’s a matter of disappearing from the surface of this Earth,” Kausea Natano, the prime minister, said in September. So Tuvalu is now asking a different question: how can it continue existing if that happens?
This article appeared in the Asia section of the print edition under the headline “Waterworlds”
From the October 14th 2023 edition
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