Tuvalu's digital twin and First Digital Nation

At COP27 in 2022, Tuvalu's foreign minister Simon Kofe announced that Tuvalu would become the First Digital Nation.^1,2 It would recreate its land digitally, archive its history and culture, and move all government functions into a digital space, so that it can go on functioning as a state even after its land is gone.¹ His video speech showed him on a beach that turned out to be a digital copy of Te Afualiku.² The BBC describes this low-lying islet as expected to be Tuvalu's first casualty of climate change.² The project sits within the government's Future Now programme (Te Ataeao Nei).² Esri's account places the words "the world's first digital nation" in Kofe's knee-deep-in-water address at COP26 in 2021.³ Tuvalu's own page and the BBC date the announcement to COP27.^1,2

Kofe gave an update at COP28.¹ By then Tuvalu had completed a lidar scan of all 124 islands and islets.^1,2 It had begun installing two submarine cables for bandwidth, and started exploring a digital ID on a blockchain for its diaspora.¹ It had begun a living archive of its culture, to which citizens are invited to contribute their most treasured personal items.¹ And it had amended its constitution so that the state remains in perpetuity, whatever happens to its territory.^1,2 The government's page lists twelve countries that have signed joint communiqués recognising that permanent sovereignty.¹

The mapping of the capital went further. In September 2023 the nonprofit PLACE signed an agreement with the Prime Minister, with the support of the Pacific Community's Digital Earth Pacific programme.³ In March and April 2024 PLACE photographed Funafuti from a drone and at street level, working with the government's Land and Survey team.^2,3 The street-level cameras went by truck, by moped and on foot.^2,3 Esri's ArcGIS Reality software turned the images into orthoimagery and a 3D model.³ Machine learning then picked out building outlines and the changes to the shoreline between 2019 and 2024.³ It also found more than 200 solar installations on Fongafale.³ Building height, roof slope and aspect were used to pick the houses best suited to new panels, and a flood model can be laid over a population map.³ PLACE's Frank Pichel told the BBC that scans of water tanks can help estimate drinking water.²

Not everyone in Tuvalu agrees with the idea. The BBC quotes the former prime minister Enele Sopoaga, now leader of the opposition, who said in 2023 that the plan implies Tuvalu will disappear and that there is no reason to believe it will.² It also quotes the climate activist Grace Malie, who told the UN General Assembly that Tuvalu's heritage cannot be packed into suitcases.² Taukiei Kitara is a Tuvaluan research fellow at Griffith University.² He says the programme does not mean accepting the loss of the islands.² It is one project among many, alongside physical work such as the flood-free land added on Funafuti.²

What the project has now is a detailed, repeatable record of a country and the start of analysis on it; the scenario sets out the decisions that record could inform.