The slightest canoe, the slightest shrub: everything will pass. Tuvaluans are digitally archiving every nook and cranny of their islands before rising water levels due to global warming swallow up everything. They call it digital migration. Their destination? The metaverse. This government program hopes that the virtual replica of the archipelago will preserve its state, its beauty, its culture, and the rights of its 11,000 citizens for future generations, in the absence of its lands.
Faced with such an existential threat, Tuvalu, a Polynesian island member of the Commonwealth, is also trying other projects. Leaders and scientists simultaneously attempt to beat the elements by building say and terrepleins. This is the case in many nations also threatened by rising sea levels – most of them grouped in the Alliance of Small Island States, who withdrew, out of frustration, from the COP29 discussions this Saturday, November 23. But digital migration, for its part, is a first.
It was the Minister of Foreign Affairs at the time, Simon Kofe, who unveiled the project in 2022, during COP27 in Egypt, in a televised speech that looked like a video game. A year later, the Digital Nation tuvaluane included 3D scanning of its 124 islands and islets, carried out using aerial laser remote sensing (Lidar). In spring 2024, the non-governmental organization Place began mapping the physical features of Funafuti. Drones and 360-degree cameras inspect the capital from top to bottom.
The Digital Nation is not just a virtual copy of the islands. It also intends to safeguard the country’s cultural heritage. Tuvaluans are invited to digitize objects and memories dear to their hearts. Archives of family photos, grandparents’ stories and traditional dances, for example, “carry within them the soul of Tuvalu”rejoices Simon Kofe.
Passports in the blockchain
The Digital Nation nevertheless comes up against international law. This is only very poorly suited to countries that would lose their territory due to global warming. A sovereign state, by definition, must have a permanent population and a defined territory – which will no longer be the case for Tuvalu in the more or less near future.
Through this project, the Tuvaluan government therefore hopes to evolve these criteria to create a new state status, more in line with ecological imperatives and an increasingly connected modern world. Tuvalu has even already adopted its new digital definition in its constitution. Twenty-six countries, including Australia and New Zealand, have recognized it. Most are experiencing global warming in proportions as catastrophic as Tuvalu.
Creating a digital State therefore requires more than a simple virtual reproduction. We must ensure that it is unique and establish the continuity of public services in the metaverse. To do this, the government is ensuring the production, in the future, of digital passports stored in the blockchain. They will make it possible to organize elections, as well as to list birth, marriage and death certificates.
However, digital copying is not unanimous in Tuvalu. Some think that it is just a communication stunt which, moreover, uses technologies that are far from being ecologically impeccable. Others, like former prime minister and opposition leader Enele Sopoaga, see it as an admission of failure in the face of global warming.
It must be said that the forecasts are hardly rosy. According to a recent NASA reportthe majority of Tuvalu’s land, including the capital’s most important infrastructure, will be below sea level by 2050. Even the most optimistic scenarios predict at least 100 days of flooding per year in the archipelago at the end of the century. Not to mention the invasion of salt water, heat waves, and cyclones.
Tuvalu’s future is so clouded that the country signed this year a historic treaty, which provides for the emigration of 280 Tuvaluans per year to Australia. They will continue their lives 5,000 kilometers from their native land with a visa and possible naturalization. From Tuvalu, they will have at least one digital copy left.
Source: www.slate.fr
