Tuvalu: Barely above water

When leaders visit the coral atolls that form the Pacific nation of Tuvalu on October 5, they will find a once-vibrant ecosystem wiped out due to climate change. The pre-COP gathering, hosted by Fiji ahead of the annual UN climate conference in Turkey, has been billed as the Pacific’s chance to show the world first-hand the damage wrought by climate change in the vast ocean region.

Leaders are also set to spend a day on low-lying Tuvalu, an atoll over 800 km north of Fiji. Here, scientists say, a marine heatwave in 2024 wiped out an estimated 99.9% of the coral that built the Tuvalu islands.

“The very system that created the islands has died. It wasn’t pollution. It wasn’t overfishing. Just a direct result from climate change,” marine biologist Austin Bowden-Kerby, who visited last year and documented the devastation, said.

Thanks to rising sea levels, scientists fear the entire archipelago could be unliveable by the end of the century.

Local scientist Rajneel Singh said climate change has already affected the waters that have long sustained Tuvalu’s population of 10,600. “Elders used to fish for red snappers and other things,” he said. “It’s no longer frequent in the catch. And the size of the fish has been reduced as well.”

Scientists presented their findings to Tuvalu’s fisheries minister in December last year and were met with disbelief. “They didn’t know,” Singh said of the meeting. “It was very difficult for him, to realise, to see photos and to listen about the situation.”