France 24:

Tuvalu’s Foreign Minister Simon Kofe addressed the world with an urgent message. Standing behind a wooden lectern, he announced that the tiny Pacific Island country would become the world’s first digital nation.

“Since COP26, the world has not acted,” he said, while the UN and Tuvaluan flags swayed in the light ocean breeze behind him. “We’ve had to take our own precautionary steps… Our land, our ocean, our culture are the most precious assets of our people. And to keep them safe from harm, no matter what happens in the physical world, we’ll move them to the cloud.”

This decision is part of Tuvalu’s Future Now Project, a preparatory plan for the worst-case scenario the country could face due to climate change. Creating a digital twin of its lands is a form of preservation, a way to digitally replicate its territory and maintain its culture. The virtual space would allow Tuvaluans to interact with their land and its natural beauty, but also to interact with one another using their own language and customs.

Tuvalu also plans to move its administrative and governance systems online. But can it practice sovereignty on virtual land?

But having the entire population of a country, even one as small as Tuvalu, interact online in real time is a technical challenge. “There are issues of bandwidth, computing power and the fact that many users have an aversion to headsets,” Kelly and Foth argue.

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