Monitoring Desk
SHARM EL SHEIKH: Tuvalu – a Pacific Island nation threatened by climate change – has said it plans to digitally recreate itself in order to “preserve” its history and culture before it gets engulfed by the rising sea levels.
The country’s foreign minister Simon Kofe made the announcement at the COP27 climate summit, saying that it was time to find alternative solutions for Tuvalu’s survival such as making it the first digitized nation in the metaverse – an online realm that utilizes augmented reality to help users interact virtually.
“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,” the minister said in a video clip which shows him standing on a digital replica of an island threatened by rising sea levels.
Tuvalu had to act as the world had not acted over ongoing global warming, he said in his address. Kofe added that temperature rise assessments have remained well above 1.5 degrees Celsius, predicting the imminent disappearance of islets like his country.
The Metaverse
Metaverse in the simplest terms is a virtual or online world in which people live, work, shop and interact with each other all while sitting on their couch in the physical world.
Although the “metaverse” concept itself isn’t new, however it first became a household term in 2021 when social media giant Facebook changed its corporate name to Meta.
Global Warming and Disappearing Islands
Numerous Islands all over the planet, particularly in the Pacific, are under extreme threat of submerging under water amid global warming and consequent rising sea levels. Five Solomon Islands which recently sank into the ocean by rising sea levels were the first islets to disappear in the 21st century.
Tuvalu, the independent nation of roughly 12,000 population located between Australia and Hawaii is also severely threatened by global warming. Scientists are predicting that the country – which is part of the British Commonwealth and is comprised of scattered group of nine coral atolls – might become uninhabitable within the next 100 years or even less. High tides result in flash floods almost every year which residents say are only getting worse with time. Last year, Kofe grabbed global attention by addressing the COP26 while standing submerged knee-deep under water.
