Relocating a Nation

[Alan]

Well, really, it's not a big nation at all. Rather small, actually. Due to the rising sea levels in the Pacific, however, the small island nation of Kiribati is negotiating with Fiji to purchase land for the purpose of relocating it's roughly 110k citizens.

In what could be the world's first climate-induced migration of modern times, Anote Tong, the Kiribati president, said he was in talks with Fiji's military government to buy up to 5,000 acres of freehold land on which his countrymen could be housed.

Some of Kiribati's 32 pancake-flat coral atolls, which straddle the equator over 1,350,000 square miles of ocean, are already disappearing beneath the waves.

Most of its 113,000 people are crammed on to Tarawa, the administrative centre, a chain of islets which curve in a horseshoe shape around a lagoon.

"This is the last resort, there's no way out of this one," Mr Tong said.

"Our people will have to move as the tides have reached our homes and villages."

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[Elyd]

At least they're talking about leaving before anything too bad happens. How terrifically sad.