Countries That Might Not Exist in Fifty Years (An inundation ledger — vanishing republics, drowning deltas, and the strange law being written so that a nation can outlive its own ground)
By September 2023, the Parliament of Tuvalu had amended the national constitution to declare that the country would exist in perpetuity, even if the physical territory of the islands went under. Tuvalu would remain a state, the text reads, “notwithstanding the impacts of climate change or other causes resulting in loss to the physical territory of Tuvalu.” Eleven thousand people were legislating for the possibility that they might one day have no ground to stand on. Bookkeeping, not flourish. Over the twentieth century the global sea rose by around 7.5 inches, and the World Meteorological Organization now puts the floor at half a metre more by 2100, with the pessimistic tail running to two. Pacific waters have climbed at two to three times the global rate — almost thirty centimetres in the western basin since 1990 alone — and the reasons lie as much in wind and ocean circulation as in meltwater. Violent, erratic weather arrives over the top of that: storms out of season, king tides rea...