Tuvalu fights to keep boundaries as sea levels rise

Kirsty Needham, Reuters

FONGAFALE: Tuvalu and its 11,000 people, who live on nine atolls scattered across the Pacific, are running out of time. Fukanoe Laafai would like to start a family. But she is struggling to reconcile her plans with rising sea levels that scientists predict will submerge much of her homeland by the time her children would reach early adulthood. "I think we are about to sink," said the 29-year-old clerical worker. Tuvalu, whose mean elevation is just 2 m (6.56 ft), has experienced a sea-level rise of 15 cm (5.91 inches) over the past three decades, one-and-a-half times the global average.

By 2050, NASA scientists project that daily tides will submerge half of the main atoll of Funafuti, home to 60% of Tuvalu's residents, where villages cling to a strip of land as narrow as 20 m in parts.

Life is already changing: Tuvaluans rely on rainwater tanks and a central raised garden for growing vegetables, because saltwater inundation has ruined groundwater, affecting crops. A landmark climate and security treaty with Australia announced in 2023 provides a pathway for 280 Tuvaluans annually to migrate to Australia, starting next year.

On a recent visit to Tuvalu and in interviews with more than a dozen residents and officials, Reuters found anxiety about rising seas and the prospect of permanent relocation. Four of the officials revealed progress on an emerging diplomatic strategy to establish a legal basis for Tuvalu's continued existence as a sovereign state — even after it disappears beneath the waves.

Specifically, Tuvalu aims to change the law of the sea to retain control of a vast maritime zone with lucrative fishing rights, and sees two pathways to achieve that: a test case in the international maritime tribunal, or a United Nations resolution, Reuters reporting found.

Frustration with the global response to Tuvalu's plight, even after the breakthrough deal with Australia, had led Tuvalu's diplomats to shift tactics this year, two of the officials said.

The new approach and methods have not been previously reported.

Tuvalu's land amounts to just 26 square kilometres. But it is dispersed across a far-flung archipelago, creating an exclusive economic zone of some 900,000 square kilometres — more than twice the size of California. In this close-knit and deeply Christian society, residents told Reuters they feared relocation would mean the loss of their culture. "Some will have to go and some will want to stay here," said Maani Maani, 32, an IT worker in the main town of Fongafale.

"It's a very hard decision to make," he added. "To leave a country, you leave the culture you were born with, and culture is everything - family, your sister, your brother. It is everything."

For now, Tuvalu is attempting to buy time. Construction of sea walls and barriers to guard against worsening storm surges is occurring on Funafuti, which is 400 m at its widest. Tuvalu has built 7 hectares (17.3 acres) of artificial land, and is planning more, which it hopes will stay above the tides until 2100.

By then, NASA projects a sea-level rise of 1 m in Tuvalu, or double that in a worst case, putting 90% of Funafuti under water.

Having secured an exit path for its population, Tuvalu's diplomats are fighting for legal certainty about what happens when a low-lying island state is swallowed by the sea. Under Tuvalu's plan to secure such legal assurance, some residents would stay as long as possible, ensuring a continued presence to help underpin the nation's enduring sovereignty, according to two Tuvalu officials and the terms of the treaty with Australia.

Dry land is another key requirement for statehood, so Tuvalu wants to change the law of the sea. On Wednesday, the United Nations General Assembly is scheduled to hold a high-level meeting on sea-level rise, where Prime Minister Feleti Teo will seek support from UN members for Tuvalu's campaign to have its maritime boundaries and statehood recognised as permanent, Tuvalu officials say.

Teo will speak at the opening plenary, according to Tuvalu's permanent secretary for foreign affairs, Pasuna Tuaga, along with UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres. "Tuvalu wishes to champion sea level rise to be treated as a standalone agenda, not crowded under the climate change discourse," Tuaga told Reuters. "It is an existential threat to Tuvalu's statehood and survival of its identity."

The UN's International Law Commission, which will issue a report on sea-level rise next year, in July flagged its support for a "strong presumption" that statehood would continue where a nation's land was totally or partially submerged by rising sea levels caused by climate change. The commission said some unspecified members had argued against amending the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, preferring other avenues.

Tuvalu's tuna-rich waters are plied by foreign fishing fleets that pay the country about US$30 million in licence fees annually — its biggest revenue source. Tuvalu also gets at least US$10 million a year from selling its .tv internet domain.

If the international community were to recognise Tuvalu's maritime boundaries as permanent, it would provide an economic lifeline, Deputy Prime Minister Panapasi Nelesone said in an interview.

Tuvalu has asked its diplomatic partners to sign joint communiques supporting the preservation of its maritime boundaries, though it says many have not formally responded. "We will continue to talk about that — as long as we live here," Nelesone said.

Tuvalu's neighbours — the 18 members of the Pacific Islands Forum — are on board. They have declared the region's maritime boundaries are fixed. And the treaty with Australia says "the statehood and sovereignty of Tuvalu will continue". Fifteen governments, including some in Asia and Europe, have also signed bilateral communiques with Tuvalu agreeing that its boundaries won't be changed by sea-level rise, Tuvalu officials and lawmakers say. But of the foreign jurisdictions that operate fishing fleets in the Pacific, only Taiwan, Tuvalu's diplomatic ally, and Fiji, its neighbour, have signed such communiques. Tuvalu officials say this makes them uneasy; they worry about future illegal fishing and the resultant loss of revenue.

Simon Kofe, a former judge and current lawmaker who represents Funafuti, last year spearheaded changes to Tuvalu's constitution to enshrine its perpetual statehood. The revised charter also records the maritime coordinates of Tuvalu's exclusive economic zone.

Such measures help to build a document trail to bolster Tuvalu's case should it seek a ruling on the impact of climate change on maritime boundaries in the International Tribunal on the Law of the Sea, Kofe told Reuters.

"The more countries that recognise this legal proposition of statehood being permanent, that contributes to the creation of new customary international law," he said.

Tuvalu is co-chair of the Commission of Small Island States (COSIS) on Climate Change and International Law, founded three years ago with a declaration that maritime zones apply without reduction in the face of climate change.

In May, the group won an advisory opinion in the tribunal, which said states have an obligation to protect the sea from climate change. It was the tribunal's first climate-related judgment.

Donald Rothwell, an expert in international maritime law at the Australian National University, said it was a significant win that "advances the position of Tuvalu and other small island states impacted by climate change", but it was silent on maritime boundaries.

The law of the sea can evolve by individual states signing treaties with neighbours, regional agreements, and the multilateral system responding to test cases, he said.

The International Law Association, in a June report on sea-level rise, concluded that a resolution by the UN General Assembly was the clearest way to provide certainty on maritime boundaries and climate change.

The report's author, David Freestone, who is also a legal adviser to COSIS, told Reuters the UN meeting on Wednesday will be "important to gauge the mood" for a proposal to the UN General Assembly. While Tuvalu's officials seek international assurances, residents are grappling with tangible impacts of climate change — and the prospect of saying goodbye. "Everyone is thinking about it," said Maani, the IT worker. King tides are getting scary, he said, and he worries what will happen to Tuvalu's elderly residents if those of working age migrate first.

Laafai fears her community will be scattered, just as she plans to settle down. "Tuvalu is very caring," she said. "Even if you don't have much, you can share with relatives."