For one hundred and five thousand dollars, people can purchase the citizenship of Nauru, an island nation spanning eight square miles in the southwest Pacific Ocean, and get opportunities for visa-free access to eighty nine countries, including the United Kingdom, Hong Kong, Singapore, and United Arab Emirates.
For $200,000, one can purchase the citizenship of Dominica, an island nation 29 miles long and 16 miles wide in the Caribbean Sea, a facility that provides visa-free opportunities to 144 countries, including Schengen Area, China, Singapore, Hong Kong, and a 19-year visa to the United States.
For $250,000, one can get the citizenship of Saint Kitts and Nevis, two islands with a combined area of 261 square kilometers in the eastern Caribbean Sea, an opportunity that confer perks such as visa-free visits to over 156 countries, including many countries in the Schengen Area, Hong Kong,and Singapore.
As the challenges related to climate change escalate, nations such as Nauru, Dominica, Saint Kitts and Nevis, and others adopt ever-more desperate measures to cope with their situation.
Nearly 98 percent of Nauru’s emissions come from carbon dioxide from imported fossil fuels, with the nation likely to experience warming in the range of 0.9 to 3.0 degrees Celsius in the near future, depending on the 21st century rate of global emissions, while the island nation has been rising at a rate of around five millimeters per year since 1993.
A significant amount of greenhouse gas emissions of Saint Kitts and Nevis come from imported fossil fuels, with the island nation projected to see sea level rise in the range of 0.3 to 2.2 meters by 2100 under various emission scenarios, with temperature projections of between 2.7 and 3.4 degrees Celsius in seventy-five years’ time.
Electricity generation accounts heavily for Dominica’s emissions from imported fuel, with the country expected to witness between 2.7 and 3 degrees Celsius by 2100, while experts forecast a continued sea level rise of between 11 to 25 centimeter increases, as well as the potential impact of storm surges and coastal inundation.
If climate change issues accelerate, nations such as Nauru, Dominica Republic, Saint Kitts and Nevis, and others could find themselves under water, so desperate measures such as citizenships for investments come into place, to enable thousands of people survive the onslaught of sea surges and other climate change tribulations.
People in Nauru could take another desperate measure as a result of economic challenges arising from climate-change induced rising sea levels, tapping into the deep-sea mining sector, which is estimated to reach a market size of around $15.3 billion by 2030, a venture that could threaten vital marine ecosystems and worsen current challenges.
The government in Papua New Guinea took the desperate measure of considering deep-sea mining for among other reasons climate change-induced rising seas, granting a Canadian company an initial exploration license in 2011, the project targeting an area 25 kilometers off the west coast of the nation, with the aim of discovering and harvesting copper and gold in rocks found 1,500 to 1,600 meters below sea level.
The people in Kiribati could take the same desperate measure as a result of economic challenges from rising sea levels, getting involved in the deep-sea sector in the Clipperton Fracture Zone, a vast area of about six million square kilometers in the northeastern Pacific Ocean, about 1.7 percent of the world’s ocean surface.
In short, pressures from climate change could in the future not only force nations to embark on deep-sea mining and citizenship for investment measures, they could also force them to into other risky ventures, such as injecting aerosols into the stratosphere, carbon storage, and advanced nuclear power, further worsening the present crisis.
To prevent risky and desperate measures, nations could implement renewable energy options, clean-tech innovations, transparency in climate decision making, and green financing measures.
By Adetokunbo Abiola
