It was the most famous dry-cleaning bill in the history of climate change. Smartly suited, Tuvalu’s foreign minister, Simon Kofe, stood knee-deep in the ocean that had spent decades advancing on his island-nation homeland and warned: “We’re sinking, but so is everyone else.”
In the four years since Kofe’s soggy, impactful speech for the COP26 climate conference, the issue of so-called ‘vanishing islands’ has grown conspicuously more acute. Multiple destinations, from the Maldives and Seychelles in the Indian Ocean to Tuvalu’s sister nations such as Kiribati and the Solomon Islands in the Pacific, are at risk, as well as atolls and isles stretching from the Bay of Bengal to the Florida Keys.
