Tuvalu plans for its own disappearance

FOR OVER three decades the Pacific island country of Tuvalu has implored industrialised countries to cut their greenhouse-gas emissions. For over three decades global temperatures have ticked up. Tuvalu’s government warns that its territory could slip underwater by the end of the century. “It’s a matter of disappearing from the surface of this Earth,” Kausea Natano, the prime minister, said in September. So Tuvalu is now asking a different question: how can it continue existing if that happens?

Mr Natano’s government has amended the constitution to assert that the country will exist “in perpetuity” even if its landmass does not. The new wording, which came into effect on October 1st, will not on its own change very much. Under international law, a country must have a physical territory and permanent population. But no one has considered what happens if climate change strips a state of those qualities, says Bal Kama, a lawyer who advised the government on its constitutional changes. Tuvalu hopes that if other vulnerable countries follow its lead, international law could change.