Kiribati is Disappearing Underwater

The Sydney Morning Herald reports, "The Pacific nation of Kiribati is negotiating to buy land in Fiji so it can move islanders under threat from rising sea levels, in what could be the first climate-induced relocation of a country."

According to the article by reporter Paul Chapman, "Anote Tong, the Kiribati President, said he was in talks with Fiji's military government to buy up to 2000 hectares of freehold land on which his 113,000 countrymen could resettle. Some of Kiribati's 32 flat coral atolls, which straddle the equator over 3.5 million square kilometres of ocean, are already disappearing. The total land area is 811 square kilometres and the average elevation is less than two metres above sea level."

Kiribati is a member of the Commonwealth and was known as the Gilbert Islands until independence from Britain in 1979.The islands were named after Thomas Gilbert, a British naval captain who navigated the archipelago in 1788. Kiribati is the local pronunciation of Gilbert.

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