According to research in 2018, our Pacific atoll nation of Tuvalu is actually growing, against all expectations that we would be sinking, or very well sunk by now.

A report by UPI at the time stated: Scientists at the University of Aukland analyzed hundreds of high-definition aerial photographs taken of Tuvalu’s 101 islands over the last 40 years. Since 1970, the nation’s total size has increased by nearly 3 percent. The islands have added some 73.5 hectares, or 181.6 acres, of new land. Despite rising sea levels, the study showed at least 73 of Tuvalu’s 101 islands are larger than they were 40 years ago.

This news hasn’t been good for the Tuvalu government’s grab for cash from larger supportive nations who feel terrible that their carbon footprint is drowning us. But the government maintains that we still need the financial support and we will sink under rising seawater eventually! Tuvalu’s foreign minister, Simon Kofe, was recently at the COP27 climate summit drumming up support.

According to a recent report by The Australian Associated Press, Tuvalu plans to build a digital version of itself to preserve its history as it submerges below the Pacific Ocean.

“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,” said Mr Kofe in a video with him standing on a digital replica of an islet threatened by the thought of a rising sea level.

At COP26 Kofe made a dramatic address to the conference by standing knee-deep in the sea to show how Tuvalu is on the front line of climate change. This year he attempted the same but a little further out in much deeper water but the conference attendants could not understand what he was saying as he kept disappearing under waves.

Kofe hopes the digital version of his nation will allow the state and its maritime boundaries and resources to continue to be recognised as the people retreat to the North Shore of Sydney in a high-tech village. From their new digital vantage point the foreign minister has hopes Tuvalu will become a digital trading meca, a tax-free haven for companies, and something he called currency washing (which sounded very much like money laundering, but he assured us that there will be no money laundermats in the new digital Tuvalu).

“As much as it will be dissapointing to see Tuvalu sink under the Pacific, we feel a fresh wave of optimism, air conditioning, stylish streetwear and the Sydney nightlife awaiting us,” he said after his presentation to the COP27.

In an unfortunate misunderstanding, the Minister for Home Affairs & Agriculture was captured on video bulldozing parts of the main island into the lagoon at 3am yelling “We are drowning, we are drowning!” When questioned by the police about his unorthodox behaviour, he explained it was a sea level rising mitigation program and nothing to do with foreign aid based on satellite imagery of a shrinking island. He has left for his unit in Sydney’s Vaucluse, claiming that home affairs and agriculture issues are best sorted out away from the husstle and busstle of down town Funafuti.