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What's preventing people from moving onto stilt houses or even large floating seasteads? The big asset of Kiribati is their extensive EEZ which guarantees income from fishing or other activities (mining, drilling etc). You can chain together steel and concrete pontoons, add soil on top all without terrafirma. That could even be funded by the industrialized nations that are supposedly responsible for the sea level rise (a tiny cost, compared to actually cutting emissions).



I can think of a few likely problems. The lack of surface area would make it harder to get fresh water; something that's already difficult. One of the main exports is copra, but I doubt that growing coconut trees on a platform will be economically worthwhile. The same holds for other agriculture currently on the island. (Sea level rise would also affect aquaculture in the lagoons, but I can't guess if it would be better or worse.) I expect it will be extremely expensive to raise the two international airports and over a dozen domestic ones.

Assuming intense agriculture at 0.25 acres per person (that's 8x the current population density) implies 100 sq. km of platform area. I see that sea docks cost around $30/sq. foot. That's just a bare dock, without soil, so let's say $50/sq. ft. "furnished" and at wholesale pricing. (I suspect I'm far under the actual price.)

That's roughly $50 billion, or almost 20x the country's GDP.

On top of that, add maintenance costs. I can't begin to estimate that.


How much would that be if it's a concrete platform with polystyrene on the inside for buoyancy?


And able to stand up to the occasional typhoon? I have no idea. The point of my exercise was to establish a minimum cost, to show why the idea isn't economically practical.

Japan's Mega-float cost $150 million in 1999 for 1km x 60 meters. It was designed as a floating airport for use in a protected bay. The floating airport proposal ("Floatport") for San Diego was estimated at $10-$30 billion. Both show that my $50 billion estimate is very low.

Then again, you don't actually need floating structures. As an alternative estimate, a cubic meter of soil is about $35. The cost of 1 meter of soil spread across 100 sq. km is $3.5 billion, plus shipping.

I see no way to get lower than that number. I see many way to get a lot higher.


Would the EEZ still be there when the islands are gone?


It's unlikely that the islands will disappear entirely. The highest point is 81 m above sea level, and the US claims the area around Kingman Reef ("largely submerged", highest point is 1.5 meters above sea level) as part of its EEZ.

You'll need to consult the Law of the Sea Convention for full details on the EEZ. As an edge case, Japan claims Okinotorishima http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Okinotorishima which used to have a few rocks on the surface but is now completely submerged except for artifical structures, and Rockall is part of Scotland http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rockall , with its own complicated EEZ history.

Therefore I think it's a moot issue - it will be a long time (if ever) before Kiribati is gone.




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