2024-02-26 10:23:00
Does Taiwan have anything to worry regarding? Feleti Teo was officially appointed Prime Minister of the Tuvalu Islands on Monday, following elections which brought the question of relations with Taiwan to the forefront. Because Tuvalu, this Polynesian archipelago made up of sparsely populated atolls, is one of the twelve states, including the Vatican, which still fully recognize Taiwan.
« I have had conversations with each of them and received guarantees from each of them them,” Andrew Lin said following the inauguration ceremony.
Influence of Beijing
As a reminder, relations between China and Taiwan are very tense. Beijing considers Taipei as one of its provinces, which it has not yet managed to reunify with the rest of its territory since the end of the Chinese civil war in 1949, and is committed to seizing one. day, by force if necessary.
Beijing then actively courted Taiwan’s allies in the Pacific, convincing the Solomon Islands and Kiribati to cut ties with Taipei to establish diplomatic relations with China in 2019. The small number of countries recognizing Taiwan as a sovereign country , what’s more, further reduced in January when Nauru imitated them.
In this context, the elections in Tuvalu and the choice of a new leader have attracted increased attention, and the process has taken longer than expected. Because in the absence of political parties, the selection of a Prime Minister takes some time in this micro-state of 11,500 inhabitants which elects 16 deputies.
Especially since Kausea Natano, who has led the country since September 2019, failed to be re-elected as a deputy in his constituency on the main island, Funafuti, and therefore had to leave his post. If he had appeared as a fervent supporter of Taiwan, some of his competitors, such as former Prime Minister Enele Sopoaga and the Minister of Finance, Seve Paeniu, had not ruled out the idea of reconsidering the position of Tuvalu if they were elected.
Uncertainties loom
« The positions he held were positions where he had to deal with countries that did or did not have relations with Taiwan, and so he probably had to be impartial in this regard ». « He mightn’t express an opinion one way or the other, so we don’t know if he leans one way or the other ».
Tuvalu facing climate problems
Tuvalu might be one of the first countries submerged by rising sea levels linked to global warming. Tuvalu’s 11,000 inhabitants are spread across nine islands whose highest point does not exceed five meters above sea level. Two of the atolls depicted on its eleven-star flag have already disappeared and even some of the highest areas might become uninhabitable by 2100 due to contamination of soil and land by seawater. Climatologists fear that the entire archipelago will be uninhabitable within 80 years. Because in Tuvalu, the land only represents 26km2 while its territorial waters cover 800,000 km2.
Despite its bleak future, Tuvalu does not want to give up hope of preserving its land for as long as possible. So the government is fighting for the world to really take climate change seriously, in particular by getting rid of fossil fuels.
It also launched a coastal adaptation project which aims to recover 3.8km of land swallowed by the ocean and raise the most vulnerable areas. A program financed by 36 million dollars in international aid and 2.9 million from Tuvalu. Around 40% of the capital Funafuti is already underwater during exceptional high tides which also wash away the roots of crops.
And while the first phase of the project is almost complete, the former prime minister deplored in mid-January that its limited scope might not help all his fellow citizens. With this in mind, the country is at the forefront of the climate fight on the international scene, demanding a global tax on fossil fuels and the establishment of a fund intended to compensate for ” loss and damage » of developing countries. What the COP28 in Dubai took action at the end of last year.
In case the worst happened, Tuvalu began safeguarding its cultural heritage in the virtual world, creating what some have called a model of Nation-States 2.0 ».
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