30 November 2022 – by Cosmo Sanderson
Tuvalu is planning to create a digital replica of itself in the metaverse as the island nation faces the prospect of sinking into the Pacific ocean.
Tuvalu’s Foreign Minister Simon Kofe told the COP27 climate summit last month that his country was having to create a digital backup – something more often used for protecting precious documents or holiday albums – to save “our culture, our knowledge [and] our history in a digital space.”
Tuvalu, a nation made up of nine atolls and reef islands situated around halfway between Australia and Hawaii, is predicted to disappear completely into the Pacific by the end of the century due to rising sea levels caused by global warming.
“As our land disappears, we have no choice but to become the world’s first digital nation,” said Kofe, speaking against a digitally simulated background of Tuvalu.
Kofe also hopes that recreating Tuvalu in the metaverse will allow the country to continue functioning as a nation if and when it disappears beneath the waves.
Tuvalu’s former attorney general and current high commissioner to Fiji, Eselealofa Apinelu, said at a recent conference that “when that finally happens, that Tuvalu has disappeared and all they have is this virtual world… we should always be able to remember Tuvalu as it is, before it disappears.”
“It needs to be stored somewhere that there was a country called Tuvalu”.
On the expected displacement of the country’s 12,000-strong population, she said that “if we can slowly allow the people to migrate at their own pace according to the laws of the individual countries they want to migrate to, it’s easier than packing up a whole nation at once and putting it somewhere.”
