The president of the Pacific island state of Kiribati favors buying more land abroad after a purchase in Fiji, to secure both food supplies and perhaps a future home if rising sea levels swamp low-lying atolls.
Anote Tong, in Norway on a stopover to view melting Arctic ice pushing up sea levels before he attends a U.N. climate summit in New York on Tuesday, said he wanted to lay conditions for "migration with dignity" from the islands.
Kiribati, a nation of 100,000 people scattered over 32 Pacific atolls, completed a deal with Fiji this year to buy 6,000 acres (2,400 hectares) of forest land for A$9.3 million ($8.3 million) on the island of Vanua Levu, he said.
"With sea level rise, the value of land will go up," Tong predicted in a weekend interview, nursing a cold from a visit to the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard. "I am not going to relocate my people, but someone else might" in coming decades.
"Some people have suggested 'why not (buy more land in) Australia and New Zealand, they are selling land to the Chinese?'," he said. "My view is 'yes' ... property poses the least risk" compared to other investments.
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