A Warning from the Center of the World: Pacific Nation Kiribati Is Disappearing as Sea Level Rises

At the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah, we speak with former President Anote Tong about his desperate efforts to save his small Pacific Island state of Kiribati from rising sea levels from global warming, as told in the new documentary “Anote’s Ark.” Kiribati is a collection of 33 coral atolls and reef islands located over 1,000 miles south of Hawaii and nearly 4,000 miles northeast of Australia. It is home to 100,000 people. Already, an entire village was inundated, and its residents forced to flee, as the sea wall broke into a freshwater pond. Tong predicts his country will become uninhabitable in 30 to 60 years as rising tides displace more and more people, wash away infrastructure, degrade fragile coral reefs and disrupt the remote island’s food supply.