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Kiribati: First Nation To Be Swallowed Up By The Sea

This video was uploaded to Youtube in November 2011, and discusses the climate change reality in Kiribati, and that the inhabitants may soon have to leave their island homes because of the rising sea level. Kiribati is a low-lying island nation

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This video was uploaded to YouTube in November 2011, and discusses the climate change reality in Kiribati, and that the inhabitants may soon have to leave their island homes because of the rising sea level. Kiribati is a low-lying island nation located in the South Pacific. There is mention of the possibility of have to relocate "in a few years." It has been about four months, and already the people of Kiribati are preparing to relocate. Their island homes are being swallowed up by the rising sea level.

Via:

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."

The Kiribati government has launched an educational program for its people with the goal of giving them skills to find employment in Fiji in order to survive, and also that they might be more appealing as potential migrants.

As they prepare to leave behind their homeland, their culture and lifestyle, Mr. Tong hopes that the international community will make funds available for their urgent need, the land purchase, and setting up homes for over 100,000 people. Then there's still the matter of persuading the government of Fiji to agree to this plan. And all the while the tides flow further inland on Kiribati.

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