Tuvalu’s Response to Climate Change

Abstract

Tuvalu is among the Pacific nations most threatened by the steady rise in sea levels. Most people in Tuvalu do not want to lose their country to the man-made forces that are damaging the planet, and the Tuvalu government is doing something about it. A minor destination for traders and missionaries in the nineteenth century, Tuvalu — previously known as the Ellice Islands — became part of the British protectorate of the Gilbert and Ellice Islands in 1892, then of the British colony of the same name in 1916. Tuvalu broke away from Kiribati in 1975 before proceeding to independence in its own right in 1978. Tuvalu — three reef islands and six atolls — now faces possible physical extinction as a territorial state.