Island plans to become a digital nation in the Metaverse due to climate change wiping them off the map
Topics: Climate Change, Facebook
Gabriella Ferlita
Featured Image Credit: Meta / robertharding / Alamy
Topics: Climate Change, Facebook
An island impacted by climate change has planned to become a digital nation in the Metaverse in light of the threat of being wiped off the map.
The Pacific island of Tuvalu is facing devastation as a result of the climate crisis and rising sea levels.
The nation is made up of a group of nine islands, which is home to 12,000 people and is located between Australia and Hawaii.
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Almost 40 percent of the capital district becomes submerged by water during high tide, with the whole country predicted to be covered by water by the end of the century.
The Foreign Minister of the nation, Simon Kofe, now plans to transform their threatened island into a digital one, using Facebook’s Metaverse to replicate the islands and landmarks and preserve the land’s rich history and culture.
Kofe said at the COP27 climate summit, which is taking place this week in Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt, that they needed to look at alternative ways to prolong their beloved country.
He said that taking on the role of the first digital nation in the Metaverse, which is an online community which uses augmented and virtual reality and was developed by Mark Zuckerberg, was one of the steps they would be taking.
He said: “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 will move them to the cloud.”
Kofe hopes that the creation of such a nation online would allow their country to continue to work as a functioning state even if it were to become completely covered by water.
The island would become the first country to build a replica of itself on the platform but would follow the footsteps of the city of Seoul, South Korea and the island of Barbados, who both announced they would respectively join the Metaverse to provide admin and consular services.
Kofe previously caught the interest of the world at last year’s COP26 in Glasgow, Scotland, when he led the conference whilst standing knee-deep in the ocean to show how his nation is battling with climate change.
The Foreign Minister said they were having to act as other countries around the world are not doing their bit to prevent climate change.