In deep water: the first country in the world to surrender to global warming

The Republic of Kiribati is the most remote inhabited location on earth. It will no longer exist by 2050. Climate change is slowly stealing the land into the sea and soaking the ground in saltwater. The prognosis right now is that Kiribati is dying by gradually drowning. Elaine Byrne reports from the first country in the world to surrender to global warming

‘Infant mortality is over 10 times the rate of that in Ireland’ — Little Aareau lives on the remote island of North Tarawa in Kiribati. She had never seen a camera before.

Elaine Byrne

'Normally the land was further, what is the word in English?' Ioteba pauses, searching for the vocabulary to describe what is happening to his people. "Corrosion," he says.

We are standing on the shaggy sand of the shoreline where his father's home used to be. The tropical waters from the lagoon are lapping at his bare feet as he rearranges his garden of piercing black coral rocks.