Rising seas spark Pacific interest in floating islands
UNITED STATES: When former Google software engineer Patri Friedman came up with the idea of building floating islands, he had in mind libertarians, seeking freedom to live beyond the reach of governments.
But his futuristic plan has now found a new, motivated and very different audience – small islands slowly being submerged by sea level rise.
The Pacific nation of French Polynesia, looking for a potential lifeline as global warming takes hold, in January became the first country to sign an agreement to deploy the floating islands.
‘‘Dreams belong to those who want to move forward and make them happen,’’ said Jean-Christophe Bouissou, the country’s housing minister, at a ceremony where he inked a memorandum of understanding with The Seasteading Institute.
The institute – the name combines ‘‘sea’’ and ‘‘homesteading’’ – is the brainchild of Friedman and Silicon Valley investor Peter Thiel, who initially pumped more than US$1 million into the floating islands project. He is now no longer involved in the institute, but Friedman is taking forward the project.
With its possibility of creating new floating nation states, it has won converts among libertarians, whose ideology argues that greater freedom makes people thrive, said Doug Bandow, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute, a Washington DC libertarian think tank.
But the possibility of keeping a sinking nation afloat clearly presents another opportunity for the technology, he said.
‘‘If [island nations] feel threatened by the rising sea . . . they might view this as being the best option for their people,’’ Bandow said.
‘‘Obviously, living on a seastead is very different from even living on an island. Nevertheless, if you figure there’s going to be relocation, maybe this is a better option to stay in the region as opposed to having to literally move en masse to another country,’’ he said.
Low-lying, small islands of the Pacific are disproportionately at risk of losing land as sea level climbs by an expected 25-80 centimetres by the late 21st century, according to the United Nations’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
In a 2013 study, researchers at the Paris-Sud University found that French Polynesia and New Caledonia were most at risk of seeing their islands entirely submerged.
Bouissou says he sees in floating cities the kind of outside-the-box thinking that could solve such a problem.
‘‘There are very few people that have this kind of ability to be forward looking.’’
Under the terms of the deal with French Polynesia, The Seasteading Institute will first study the project’s economic and environmental impact, at the institute’s own cost, said Joe Quirk, a project spokesman.
If the study looks positive, the institute will try to raise investment to put in place three solarpowered pilot platforms, each roughly 50m by 50m, Quirk said.
– Reuters