Back in August 2024, a tiny island nation and a continent-sized one entered into the Australia-Tuvalu Falepili Union. This treaty included agreements that Australia would help its Pacific island neighbor with climate and sea level rise resilience “to ensure Tuvaluans can stay and thrive in their homeland, protecting Tuvaluan culture, heritage and traditions for generations to come.”
But also: Australia would help a few of those Tuvaluans to leave a place where the literal highest point is 15 feet above sea level in the face of rapidly rising seas. In the first year of a new program, the larger country would provide up to 280 visas, allowing them to “migrate to Australia – temporarily or permanently – to live, work, and study as permanent residents.” The opening round of that program has arrived, and well, the numbers appear a bit off: more than 3,000 Tuvaluans have entered a ballot to snag one of those 280 visas. Tuvalu’s population at the last census in 2022: 10,643.
Their desire to escape is both devastating and easily understandable. According to NASA, Tuvalu can expect more than half a foot of sea level rise in the coming few decades, an enormous amount for a place with so little high ground. Even if the world somehow stops warming at 1.5 degrees Celsius (virtually impossible, at this point), the country would see upwards of 150 days of flooding every year by 2100. If we let it get to 3.0 degrees (exceedingly possible, at this point), make it 250 days per year. At that point, the country is more flood than land.
There are ways to protect parts of Tuvalu, but they cost money — plenty more than the $25 million or so Australia committed to the Tuvalu Coastal Adaptation Project, and definitely more than the $65 million that represents the country’s annual GDP. That’s the lowest GDP in the world, less than half that of similarly tiny and threatened Nauru. Other countries in similar situations have considered other escape plans, like in 2014 when Kiribati purchased $9 million-worth of land on Fiji, which features a bunch of much higher terrain. But turning land into a home is another story, and will require help from countries like Australia, as well as the rest of the rich and climate change-causing world.
The 3,125 Tuvaluans who entered the ballot so far did so within four days of it opening last week. It doesn’t close until July 18.
GET SPLINTER RIGHT IN YOUR INBOX
The Truth Hurts
