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generations. Here, the coast is Kiribati. In an era of more frequent storms and sea surges, also higher waves, the islands are under constant attack. Official tidal records chronicle a sea level rise of about three millimeters a year since 1992, but such readings can be problematic as periodic El Niño events raise sea levels, while La Niñas bring smaller rises or even slight falls.
    Rising seas are but part of the problem. The extreme weather events that accompany them are far more damaging, if a projected fifty-centimeter rise—perhaps a conservative estimate—transpires. Coastal erosion is already pervasive. High waves, some 3.5 meters high, sweep over seawalls, topple coconut and papaya trees, and flood houses and gardens. A World Bank report projects that between a quarter and a half of the southern portions of Tarawa, where over half the population lives, will be inundated by 2050. As much as 80 percent of the northern areas could vanish under rising sea levels and storm surges in the same time frame. The measured statistics provide sobering data, but they also mask a much more volatile situation. Events such as exceptionally high king tides are sweeping farmland out to sea and devastating villages, as well as contaminating freshwater wells. People who have lost their houses to the ocean are moving to slightly higher ground, but all too often there is nowhere to go. Saltwater intrusion is already affecting taro crops, which are sensitive to changes in groundwater, as are coconut trees, which provide copra, dried coconut meat, a major component in Kiribati’s economy. As the land area diminishes in the face of the Pacific and seawatercontaminates wells, the islanders face serious water shortages, even after building a network of boreholes that are fast drawing down an underground freshwater lense under Tarawa, formed by percolating rainwater.
    Kiribatans have a profound attachment to the land of their ancestors, but they face a future of limited options like their distant neighbors on Tuvalu. The islanders have adapted about as far as they can, given a population density on Tarawa of about three times that of Tokyo, around fifteen thousand people per square kilometer. There are some seawalls, but to construct the kinds of massive defenses that would be needed to curb storm surges is unaffordable. There is but one long-term solution: out-migration, organized not haphazardly, but in a controlled manner. Talk of constructing artificial islands like oil rigs at an estimated cost of about two billion dollars each went nowhere. The government is now talking of purchasing about 2,400 hectares of land on the island of Vitu Levu in Fiji to relocate environmental refugees.
    Rising sea levels are part of a much more complex problem, something so imperceptible that many Kiribatans do not consider it a threat. It is, after all, hard to believe that much of Kiribati, or Tuvalu for that matter, will be underwater within less than a century. Rapidly growing island populations, contaminated water supplies, and the loss of agricultural land to exceptionally high tides and sea surges are immediate concerns. So are flooded houses and villages, and receding coastlines. Food resources are under stress. A combination of all these factors limits the islanders’ options severely, to the point that in the final analysis possible solutions all revolve around out-migration, however unwilling Kiribatans are to face it. Where will refugees go? At this point, no one knows.
    The Australian government is supporting the training of small numbers of young Kiribatan people in employable skills like nursing, on the assumption that they will remain in Australia instead of returning to their overpopulated, threatened homeland. The president of Kiribati supports this program, which he calls “migrating with dignity.” Such limited schemes provide economic incentives for people to move away gradually so they have time to adapt and build Kiribatan