Kiribati tries to buy Fiji land as rising sea threatens residents

WELLINGTON, New Zealand — The Pacific nation of Kiribati is negotiating to buy land in Fiji so it can relocate islanders under threat from rising sea levels, in what could be the first climateinduced relocation of a country.

Anote Tong, the Kiribati president, said he was in talks with Fiji’s military government to buy up to 20 square kilometres of freehold land on which his 113,000 countrymen could resettle.

Some of Kiribati’s 32 flat coral atolls, which run along the equator over 3.5 million square kilometres of ocean, are already disappearing. The total land area is 810 square kilometres and none of the atolls is much more than a metre above sea level.

Villagers with sea water lapping at their feet have been forced already to abandon settlements. Freshwater supplies and crops have been ruined by saltwater, while storms are causing shoreline erosion.

Tarawa, a chain of islets that curve around a lagoon, is the administrative centre and home to the biggest concentration of people.

“This is the last resort; there’s no way out of this one,” Tong said. “Our people will have to move as the tides have reached our homes and villages.”

Tong, who said the effects of climate change present a daily battle for his people, said the plan would be to send a trickle of skilled workers first, so they could merge more easily with the Fijian population of 860,000 and make a contribution to that country’s economy.

“We don’t want 100,000 people from Kiribati coming to Fiji in one go,” he told the state- controlled Fiji One television channel. “They need to find employment, not as refugees but as immigrant people with skills to offer, people who have a place in the community, people who will not be seen as second- class citizens. What we need is the international community to come up with an urgent funding package to deal with that ambition, and the needs of countries like Kiribati.”

Suva, Fiji’s capital, lies about 3,200 kilometres from Kiribati, although the land Kiribati wants to buy is understood to be on Vanua Levu, the secondlargest island.

Tong’s government has launched an “education for migration” program, aimed at improving the skills of its population to make them more attractive as migrants.

Kiribati youngsters study for degrees at the University of the South Pacific, which is based in Suva and jointly owned by 12 Pacific island countries.

Alumita Durulato, a lecturer in international affairs at the university, said: “They are already preparing quite well. They have educated their youth to be able to survive in the new lands that they want to go to.”