ENVIRONMENT

 the country that is preparing for its possible disappearance

Think for a moment about your home, your roots, the place you love the most in the world.

And how difficult would it even be to imagine that this place would literally disappear from the face of the planet.

For the inhabitants of dozens of island states this is a real fear.

The rise in sea level due to climate change is already causing loss of land and a shortage of drinking water on these islands.

At BBC Mundo we explore the situation of a small nation in the Pacific Ocean, Tuvalu, which has not only been urging the most polluting countries to drastically reduce their greenhouse gas emissions.

This nation is also legally preparing for the worst-case scenario: the total submergence of its territory.

Tuvalu's Minister for Justice, Communications and Foreign Affairs Simon Kofe sent a dramatic message to COP26, the recent climate change summit in Glasgow, Scotland.

"We are sinking, but the same is happening to everyone," he said.

With knee-deep water, in a site that years ago was dry terrain, Kofe made it clear that the drama facing Tuvalu today is only a harbinger of the serious impacts of climate change that will hit more and more, albeit in different ways. , to many other countries in the world.

Like Kiribati and the Maldives, among others, Tuvalu is a country made up of atolls, and therefore it is especially vulnerable to global warming.

The territories of these nations are based on full or partial ring-shaped coral reefs that surround a central lagoon.

"We live on very thin strips of land and in some areas you can see the ocean on both sides, on one side the open sea and on the other a lagoon," Kofe said.

"What we have been experiencing over the years is that with rising sea levels we see the erosion of parts of the island."

Map showing the location of Tuvalu in the Pacific

Tuvalu has also been facing stronger cyclones and periods of droughts, the minister added. And the higher ocean temperature has bleached coral reefs, vital for coastal protection and fish reproduction.

But there is another even more pressing problem: the intrusion of ocean waters.