Tuvalu's Three-Layer Plan for Continuity
Raise the Island. Move with Dignity. Upload the Nation.
by Futoshi Tachino
At high tide on Fogafale—the long, thin islet that holds Tuvalu’s capital—you can stand on the lagoon shore and see the ocean through the breadfruit trees behind you. There isn’t much “away” in a place only a couple of meters above sea level. So Tuvalu has done something extraordinary: it is building a future on three layers at once—physical, legal-human, and digital—so that Tuvaluans can keep being Tuvaluans, no matter what the water decides.
The first layer is literal ground. In late 2023, Tuvalu completed 7.8 hectares of “raised, flood-free land” on Funafuti, the most ambitious phase of the Tuvalu Coastal Adaptation Project (TCAP). In 2024 Australia and New Zealand committed to TCAP-II to scale protection as seas push higher. In October 2024, the new land was formally handed over to the government—an almost paradoxical act in a country often described as vanishing. The strategy isn’t romantic. It’s dredges, rock, and revetments—designed to keep homes, clinics, and schools dry on a narrowing strip of coral sand.
The second layer is people—and the law that travels with them. On 28 August 2024, the Australia–Tuvalu Falepili Union entered into force. It is, at heart, a compact of care: falepili is a Tuvaluan ethic about looking after your neighbors. The treaty goes further than rhetoric. It creates a special mobility pathway—a dignified route for up to 280 Tuvaluans per year to settle permanently in Australia, with family rights and a path to citizenship. Canberra and Funafuti aimed to make the pathway operational in mid-2025; by June, the first visa ballot opened, prompting real debate at home about opportunity, identity, and what “continuity of Tuvalu” looks like if more citizens live abroad.
The third layer is the one that captured imaginations far beyond the Pacific: Tuvalu’s “digital nation.” At COP27, then-foreign minister Simon Kofe unveiled a plan to digitize Tuvalu’s territory, culture, and civic life—a legal-technical gambit to preserve statehood symbols, archives, and services even if land is lost or uninhabitable for stretches of time. The idea is not cosplay for a disappearing country; it is a sovereignty strategy. Scholars of international law have started to treat “Digital Tuvalu” as a live test of what state continuity might mean when the Montevideo criteria (population, government, territory, external relations) are stressed by climate loss. In practice, the work uses “digital twin” techniques—high-resolution mapping, authenticated records, and online service rails—to keep Tuvalu present to its people and to the world.
Put together, these layers—raise, move, upload—are not a hedge; they are a continuity architecture. Each solves a different failure mode. When a storm overtops a seawall, the raised platform means clinics don’t flood. When drought bites and freshwater lenses turn brackish, families with a ballot-won visa can send money home or move for schooling without becoming “climate refugees.” When borders and budgets shift, a digitized cadastre, civil registry, and cultural archive anchor legal claims and belonging. And if you think that last piece is symbolic, consider this: a digital nation asserts continuity in the same networked space where Tuvalu already earns a crucial slice of revenue—the .tv country domain, which now pays Tuvalu about US $10 million a year under a 2021 contract with GoDaddy Registry. Code—names, numbers, registries—has been carrying Tuvalu’s value for years.
None of this is simple, and critics are right to push hard on every seam. Building land out into a lagoon reshapes currents and habitats and must be governed transparently. The Falepili pathway has raised fears about brain drain and sovereignty trade-offs, even as applications far exceeded the first year’s cap. And a digital nation raises unresolved questions in international law: How long can recognition endure if territory is intermittently uninhabitable? What constitutes “effective government” when services are partly online and citizens are dispersed? The point, though, is that Tuvalu isn’t choosing one bet. It is stacking bets—with partners—so that failure in one layer doesn’t cascade into national erasure.
There are teachable design choices in this stack. First, lead with the tangible. Before the metaverse, there were bulldozers and shoreline armor. Credibility begins where schoolyards stay dry. Second, tie human mobility to dignity and agency, not to emergency. A pathway with permanence and family unity is very different from precarious seasonal labor tied to someone else’s harvest. Third, treat the digital as constitutional infrastructure, not marketing. If land records, birth certificates, maritime charts, and court archives are digitized with cryptographic integrity and mirrored in multiple jurisdictions, the “digital nation” becomes not a museum but a functioning civic backbone. Fourth, fund flexibly. The .tv registry income is not a panacea, but as a stable, non-aid revenue stream it can co-finance adaptation and the care work of migration without strings attached.
It is tempting to cast Tuvalu as a climate parable—a small state forced into grand gestures by the indifference of big emitters. But look again. The spectacle here is not performative; it is pragmatic imagination. Raise the place where you can. Move the people when you must, with rights and reciprocity. And upload the polity so that, in the world’s lived systems of law and code, Tuvalu’s voice is not contingent on a sandbar.
If this is what climate leadership looks like from a country of twelve thousand, the rest of us are out of excuses. Continuity is not one thing. It is a braid.
Sources
Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (Australia). (2024, August 28). Australia–Tuvalu Falepili Union enters into force. https://www.dfat.gov.au/geo/tuvalu/australia-tuvalu-falepili-union (Department of Foreign Affairs)
Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (Australia). (2025). Australia–Tuvalu Falepili Union treaty: Mobility pathway (implementation timeline). https://www.dfat.gov.au/geo/tuvalu/australia-tuvalu-falepili-union-treaty (Department of Foreign Affairs)
Kofe, S. (2022). Digital nation announcement (COP27) and digital twin initiative. Accenture case study summary, updated 2025. https://www.accenture.com/us-en/case-studies/technology/tuvalu (Accenture)
Rothe, D. (2024). Digital Tuvalu: State sovereignty in a world of climate loss. International Affairs, 100(4), 1491–1509. https://academic.oup.com/ia/article/100/4/1491/7710472 (Oxford Academic)
Tuvalu Coastal Adaptation Project (UNDP Pacific). (2024, September 18). Australia and New Zealand back a second phase of TCAP; 7.8 ha of raised, flood-free land completed in Funafuti. https://www.undp.org/pacific/press-releases/australia-and-new-zealand-back-second-phase-tuvalu-coastal-adaptation-project-beat-sea-level-rise (UNDP)
Tuvalu Coastal Adaptation Project (official site). (2024, October 29). Official handing over of reclaimed land to the Government of Tuvalu. https://tcap.tv/ (Tuvalu Coastal Adaptation Project)
The Guardian. McGowan, M. (2025, June 20). A climate crisis, a ballot, and a chance at a new life in Australia. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/jun/20/tuvalu-climate-crisis-australia-visa-ballot (The Guardian)
Domain Name Wire. Schwartz, A. (2021, December 14). GoDaddy wins contract to run .TV. https://domainnamewire.com/2021/12/14/godaddy-wins-contract-to-run-tv-verisign-didnt-bid-for-renewal/ (Domain Name Wire)
Pacific Islands News Association. (2021, December 16). Tuvalu chooses GoDaddy for lucrative .tv domain name. https://pina.com.fj/2021/12/16/tuvalu-chooses-godaddy-for-lucrative-dot-tv-domain-name/ (PINA)
Devpolicy Blog (ANU). Howes, S., & et al. (2025, July 1). Australia–Tuvalu mobility pathway: does it address the drivers? https://devpolicy.org/australia-tuvalu-mobility-pathway-20250701/ (devpolicy.org)
Futoshi Tachino is an environmental writer who believes in the power of small, positive actions to protect the planet. He writes about the beauty of nature and offers practical tips for everyday sustainability, from reducing waste to conserving energy.
WordPress: https://futoshitachino6.wordpress.com/
About the Creator
Futoshi Tachino
Futoshi Tachino is an environmental writer who believes in the power of small, positive actions to protect the planet. He writes about the beauty of nature and offers practical tips for everyday sustainability.
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