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| Relocating an Entire Nation |
Anote Tong, president of the Kiribati nation, was in talks with Fijis military government to by up to 5,000 acres of freehold land on which his countrymen could be relocated. Currently, 113,000 people are crammed on to Tarawa, which is the administrative center of a chin of islets shaped like a horseshoe around a lagoon.
The migration is induced by climate-change when some of Kiribati's 32 pancake-flat coral atolls are disappearing beneath the waves. The islanders hold concerns about whether their culture would survive after the population moves, especially if those who leave first are mainly the young, A member of the Commonwealth, Kiribati was known as the Gilbert Islands until independence from Britain in 1979. The total land area is 313 square miles and more of the coral atolls rises more than a few feet above sea level.
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