A country without land: The first digital nation
Posted: April 04, 2025
By 2050, much of Tuvalu—a country made up of remote, low-lying islands in the South Pacific—will be submerged by the sea.[1] During high or “king” tides, 40% of its capital is regularly flooded by seawater, damaging agricultural land and groundwater. With a population of around 10,000 people and rapidly eroding shores, Tuvalu is asking: What happens to a country without land?
Tuvalu at COP: Preventing sea-level rise
In 2021, Simon Kofe, Tuvalu’s foreign minister, stood knee-deep in the sea while he pleaded with the world leaders attending COP26 to safeguard the Paris agreement and prevent the “deadly and existential threats” to his country:
“We are sinking, but so is everyone else… We will not stand idly by as the water rises around us… On the national level we are pursuing bold legal avenues to ensure that Tuvalu's existing maritime boundaries will remain intact and we will be recognized as sovereign even if our land territory is lost to climate change.”
Our Industrial Life
Get your bi-weekly newsletter sharing fresh perspectives on complicated issues, new technology, and open questions shaping our industrial world.
One year later, Simon Kofe announced an audacious plan to preserve as much as possible of the island nation in an attention-grabbing video addressed once again to world leaders attending COP27. The video opens with Kofe standing at a podium, his figure casting a shadow on one of Tuvalu’s beautiful, golden-sanded beaches as palm trees sway softly in the background. Wind rustles the palm fronds. Birds can be heard chirping the background. Kofe explains that he is speaking from “a small islet that is likely to be one of the first spots in Tuvalu to be submerged by rising sea levels.”
Accompanying these words, an eerie, foreboding music begins playing in the background, very softly at first, then gradually building, bringing with it a rising tide of anxiety. “The world has not acted and so we in the Pacific have had to act,” Kofe says. “We have no choice but to become the world’s first digital nation.” As he speaks, the camera begins to zoom out, and we realize that something is not right. The shadows under the trees flicker unnaturally. Rocks jerk around on the beach, randomly appearing and disappearing. Seagulls soar in empty black space. As the camera pans out it becomes clear that we are in a digital space, that Kofe is speaking to us from a digital replica of this threatened islet, glitching around the edges and surrounded by the black emptiness of a digital void.
Building a digital twin of an island
Ahead of the famous COP27 video, developers used software usually used for gaming to recreate an accurate representation of a tiny part of the island: capturing the way light bounces off sand, animating ocean waves, and designing swaying digital palm trees.[2] The country has now completed a comprehensive 3D lidar scan of its 124 islands and islets, and is using drones and 360-degree cameras to record high-definition street imagery of the nation’s capital, Funafuti.[3]
The country has also begun upgrading its national communications infrastructure with a submarine cable to ensure it has the bandwidth to transition to the cloud.
Tuvalu hopes that the digital twin of the island will track data such as rainfall levels and air temperature, which has been gathered over previous decades. This record data helps to demonstrate the impact that climate change has had on the island and enables the government to model future projections. It could also include real-time data on for example, where fishing boats are, how much and what type of fish is being caught. An online hazard and risk dashboard tracks wave impacts and allows the community to monitor how its shores have changed over time.
Eventually, a blockchain-powered digital ID system will connect Tuvaluan people, enabling the country to hold elections and register births, deaths and marriages.
It's not just land, governance structures and data that Tuvalu aims to digitalize. The country has also begun creating a living archive of its culture, preserving important political, cultural and historical documents, artefacts and practices in the metaverse. Tuvaluans will also be invited to contribute personal treasured items for digital preservation.
These digital systems are not just safeguarding against a future without land. They’re also helping the government and people make safer, smarter decisions today. For example, if the country was building a new school, designers and decision-makers could use the hazard and risk assessment to check whether the area had been subject to erosion or would be more likely to flood. When deciding where to install new solar panels, designers can use the 360-degree scans to model the best locations.
What is a digital nation? Redefining statehood
Tuvalu hopes that building a digital nation will allow the country to retain its identity and continue functioning as a state, even without physical land. While the country still hopes that the two will exist in parallel, it’s planning for the worst-case scenario: “Our hope is that we have a digital nation that exists alongside our physical territory, but in the event that we lose our physical territory, we will have a digital nation that is functioning well, and is recognized by the world as the representative of Tuvalu,” Simon Kofe told Long Now.
Tuvalu has amended its constitution with a new definition of statehood, announcing that “the State of Tuvalu within its historical, cultural, and legal framework shall remain in perpetuity in the future, notwithstanding the impacts of climate change or other causes resulting in loss to the physical territory of Tuvalu.”[4] This agreement has been formalized with several other countries, including the Bahamas, Taiwan and Venezuela. Tuvalu has also signed a deal with Australia, allowing 280 Tuvaluans to migrate to Australia each year, and recognizing that Tuvalu’s statehood continues even if the country is destroyed by rising sea levels.
While Tuvalu works to save its territory through sea barriers and raising land, the digital Tuvalu provides hope for a tiny nation. In a best-case scenario, where Tuvalu exists both on land and digitally, the digital twin will help Tuvalu track its changing landscape and predict and plan for its future.
