Tuvalu Desperately Announces They Might Become the World's First Digital Nation in the Metaverse

This is not a cool tech story. In case you don’t know the plight of Tuvalu, the island nation is likely to be one of the first casualties of the rise in sea levels as the country is forecasted to be mostly submerged in the next few decades if the pattern of global warming continues. Despite bold suggestions such as dimming the sun, the time horizon is unlikely to offer salvation for Tuvalu, so now the tiny island nation’s leaders have announced that the nation might be the first in the world forced to seek refuge in the metaverse:

“As our land disappears, we have no choice but to become the world’s first digital nation. 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’ll move them to the cloud.”

It’s hard to imagine where to start moving an entire culture into the metaverse, and the announcement is necessarily dramatic to draw as much attention to their tragic situation as possible. It also does raise some fascinating questions about how such a reimagined way of preserving an entire culture could work ... and how many other cultures might necessarily be salvaged in this way if world leaders continue their failure to take significant action.