REPORT


VANISHING POINT


RISING SEAS ARE RESHAPING THE WORLD’S LOWEST-LYING ISLANDS, BUT RESPONSIBLE TRAVEL CAN BE PART OF THE SOLUTION. SO HOW CAN WE VISIT WITHOUT INCREASING THEIR VULNERABILITY?


WORDS: DUNCAN CR AIG


It was the most famous dry-cleaning bill in the history of climate change. Smartly suited, Tuvalu’s foreign minister, Simon Kofe, stood knee- deep in the ocean that had spent decades advancing on his island- nation homeland and warned: “We’re sinking, but so is everyone else.” In the four years since Kofe’s soggy,


impactful speech for the COP26 climate conference, the issue of so- called ‘vanishing islands’ has grown conspicuously more acute. Multiple destinations, from the Maldives and Seychelles in the Indian Ocean to Tuvalu’s sister nations such as Kiribati and the Solomon Islands in the Pacific, are at risk, as well as atolls and isles stretching from the Bay of Bengal to the Florida Keys. And, as Kofe put it, nowhere is


immune; this is a threat that by the century’s end will be lapping at the shores of every coastal community. “Sinking” is largely a misnomer; it


Palau was the first country in the world to


require visitors to sign an environmental pledge


on arrival, promising to protect its reefs, wildlife and culture


is inundation from rising sea levels that is causing land to disappear. An island nation such as Tuvalu has a mean elevation lower than the height of an average basketball player, combined with a very limited amount of habitable land — roughly 3% of the area of New York City. As a result, even small rises in sea level can be disproportionately destructive. And with climate change gathering


pace, that’s exactly what we’re seeing. Thermal expansion and the melting


of ice sheets and glaciers has seen the rate of sea-level rise quadruple over the last century. If efforts to keep the global


temperature increase to within 1.5C of pre-industrial levels by the end of the century are successful, the ‘baked in’ damage will wreak havoc on island nations for centuries. “Even if we can stabilise air


temperature at 2C [higher], which is plausible,” says Robert Nicholls, professor of Climate Adaptation at the University of East Anglia. “The lag in the melting of glaciers and expansion of the oceans means the sea level will go on rising for hundreds, if not thousands of years. These islands are fundamentally threatened just based on what we’ve done historically.” A 2023 assessment by NASA’s Sea


Level Change Team found that sea levels around Tuvalu rose by nearly six inches over a 30-year period. By 2050, much of the country’s land and infrastructure will sit below the high- tide level. The same is true for Palau,


in Micronesia. “We have about 500 islands, many of which are atolls,” says Ilana Seid, a Palauan ambassador to the United Nations and chair of the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS). “Those will be completely underwater in 50 years.” There’s nothing gently incremental


about this inundation. Ever-more- powerful storms of the sort that


battered Jamaica in October 2025, can take vast chunks out of shorelines in a single episode. Associated sediment loss, subsidence and salt- water intrusion further erode land, threatening food production and accelerating depopulation. Islands can vanish economically and culturally long before they do so topographically.


Floating cities The alarming impermanence of islands and island nations is a global reality. Yet the challenges they face aren’t uniform. Palau, for example, has some larger volcanic islands as part of its highly dispersed landmass, which could conceivably serve as safe havens for displaced communities. Yet the geology and topography of


somewhere like the Marshall Islands, located in the central Pacific Ocean in Micronesia, makes it existentially vulnerable. The island nation’s collection of five main islands and 29 coral atolls occupies only a tiny fraction of the vast ocean around them — yet this is spread across half a million square kilometres of remote Pacific. For many islanders, relocation simply isn’t an option. Other destinations however,


such as Indian Ocean honeymoon favourite the Maldives, are sufficiently economically robust to employ innovative mitigation and adaptation measures. Hulhumalé is an artificial island near the capital


NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC TRAVELLER – ISLANDS COLLECTION 57


IMAGE: BELLA FALK


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