Atoll climate displacement is the threat that rising seas, saltwater flooding, and stronger storms will make low-lying coral-atoll nations unlivable, forcing their people to move and raising new questions about whether a country can outlast the loss of its land. It centers on four nations most exposed to it — Tuvalu, Kiribati, the Marshall Islands, and the Maldives — whose ground rises only a few metres above the ocean.
In 2023 Tuvalu changed its constitution to declare that the country will endure "in perpetuity," even if the sea one day covers every island it stands on. It is a strange thing for a government to write down: a plan to remain a state with no ground left to govern. Stranger still, other nations have begun to agree, signing documents that promise to keep recognizing a country that might lose its territory entirely.