Pacific Island Nations Face Extinction. Their Allies Bid for Bases Instead.

Countries facing existential threats from climate change might reasonably expect their wealthier allies to prioritise rescue. The Pacific island nations are discovering otherwise. As sea levels rise at twice the global average—4.5mm per year according to the World Meteorological Organisation—and entire atolls prepare for inundation, their strategic partners are focused on a different question: where to position military assets for a potential conflict over Taiwan. The inconvenient truth is that climate emergency and great-power competition have collided in the Pacific, and the former is losing.

Eleven Pacific island nations—home to 11.4 million people—face partial or total submersion by 2100 under current emissions trajectories. Kiribati, Tuvalu, and the Marshall Islands will become uninhabitable within a generation. Yet since 2022, defence agreements and base-access negotiations have outpaced climate adaptation funding by a ratio of 23 to 1 in the region. Australia committed A$3.5 billion to military infrastructure in Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands in 2024, while its Pacific climate resilience fund dispersed just A$152 million. China signed security protocols with eight Pacific nations between 2023 and 2026. The United States secured expanded access to airfields in Palau, Micronesia, and the Marshall Islands under a revised Compact of Free Association worth $7.1 billion over 20 years—but only $340 million explicitly designated for climate adaptation.

The strategic calculus

The Pacific's strategic value has nothing to do with its inhabitants. The region forms the eastern flank of any Chinese military expansion. Control of Pacific airspace and sea lanes would allow the People's Liberation Army to project power beyond the first island chain, complicating American reinforcement of Taiwan and Japan. For Washington, maintaining access to Kwajalein Atoll's missile test range, Palau's deep-water harbours, and potential airstrips across Micronesia is essential to any Indo-Pacific military posture. For Canberra, keeping Chinese military bases out of the Solomon Islands—where Beijing attempted to secure port access in 2022—is a core security priority.

Pacific leaders understand their bargaining position. At the Pacific Islands Forum in Rarotonga in August 2025, then-Tuvaluan Prime Minister Kausea Natano stated bluntly that his government would "negotiate with any partner willing to guarantee our citizens' future." Within six months, Tuvalu had signed a migration agreement with Australia—granting 280 Tuvaluans per year the right to settle—in exchange for veto rights over any Chinese security deals. The Marshall Islands, whose Kwajalein Atoll hosts the Reagan Test Site used for US ballistic missile interception trials, secured $2.3 billion over 20 years in the 2023 Compact renegotiation. Critics note that this amounts to approximately $63,000 per Marshallese citizen—yet provides no pathway to US residency and no commitment to relocate populations from atolls already experiencing regular flooding.

What the numbers reveal

The imbalance is not accidental. Defence expenditure delivers immediate strategic advantage; climate adaptation is a multi-decade commitment with uncertain electoral returns in donor countries. The political economy is stark: in Canberra, a $500 million naval facility in Manus Island secures headlines about countering China; a $500 million seawall in Kiribati does not. Beijing's approach is transactional. Its Belt and Road Initiative infrastructure—ports in Vanuatu, airstrips in Kiribati—serves dual purposes, but climate resilience is rarely among them. A 2025 analysis by the Centre for Strategic and International Studies found that only 7% of Chinese development financing in the Pacific between 2019 and 2025 targeted climate adaptation, compared to 64% for transport infrastructure with potential military applications.

The sovereignty question

Climate-induced migration raises a legal question no international framework adequately addresses: what happens to statehood when territory disappears? Under the 1933 Montevideo Convention, statehood requires a permanent population, defined territory, government, and capacity to enter relations with other states. If Tuvalu's islands are submerged, does Tuvalu cease to exist? Does its exclusive economic zone—1.3 million square kilometres of ocean—revert to international waters? Do its UN seat and treaty obligations dissolve?

These are not hypothetical questions. In November 2023, Tuvalu declared itself the world's first "digital nation," establishing a permanent governmental presence in the metaverse and blockchain-verified territorial claims. Legal scholars at the University of Sydney describe this as "sovereignty theatre"—a symbolic assertion with no binding force under international law. More substantive is the 2023 Falepili Union treaty with Australia, which guarantees Tuvaluans migration rights but explicitly requires Tuvalu to consult Canberra before signing any security agreement with another nation. Critics call this neo-colonialism; Canberra calls it pragmatism.

AUKUS and the military build-up

The AUKUS pact—announced in September 2021 and progressively expanded—has militarised the Pacific at a tempo not seen since the Second World War. Australia will acquire at least eight nuclear-powered attack submarines by the 2040s, with US and UK support for construction, maintenance, and basing. Rotational deployments of American and British submarines to HMAS Stirling in Western Australia begin in 2027. To support this, Australia has committed A$368 billion over three decades—the largest defence expenditure in its peacetime history.

Pacific island leaders were not consulted. The Pacific Islands Forum secretariat issued a terse statement noting "concern about the introduction of nuclear technology into the region"—a reference to the 1985 Treaty of Rarotonga, which established the South Pacific Nuclear Free Zone. AUKUS submarines are nuclear-powered, not nuclear-armed, a distinction Washington and Canberra insist is legally sufficient. Vanuatu's government disagrees and has proposed a case at the International Court of Justice. Fiji, which hosts Australian military training facilities, has remained diplomatically silent, though leaked cables from Suva suggest private frustration that AUKUS infrastructure investments dwarfs climate funding for the archipelago.

China's quiet expansion

Beijing's Pacific strategy is more patient. It does not seek formal bases—yet. Instead, it pursues port upgrades, telecommunications infrastructure, and economic dependency. In the Solomon Islands, China funded a $100 million stadium and a $66 million runway extension at Honiara International Airport. Kiribati, which switched recognition from Taiwan to Beijing in 2019, received $70 million for port upgrades. In Vanuatu, Chinese companies rebuilt the Port Vila wharf to accommodate larger vessels, ostensibly for tourism. A 2024 report by the United States Studies Centre noted that all three ports are capable of hosting People's Liberation Army Navy vessels, though no formal basing agreement exists.

This infrastructure creates optionality. If conflict erupts over Taiwan, China would not need permanent Pacific bases—merely the ability to refuel and resupply vessels passing through the region. The strategic effect is the same. Australia and the United States understand this, which explains the flurry of counter-offers. In 2024, Washington proposed $7 billion in Pacific infrastructure as part of the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework, though congressional appropriations have delayed disbursement. Canberra launched the Pacific Deterrence Initiative, a A$2 billion program officially described as "resilience building" but primarily focused on airstrip extensions and port deepening in Papua New Guinea, Fiji, and Samoa.

What is being done—and why it fails

Climate adaptation funding exists, but it is fragmented, delayed, and dwarfed by the scale of need. The Green Climate Fund allocated $183 million to Pacific island projects between 2015 and 2025. The Asian Development Bank committed $400 million for coastal protection and water security through 2030. New Zealand's Pacific Reset, launched in 2018, delivered NZ$714 million in climate and development aid by 2025, the most generous per-capita contribution by any donor. Yet the Pacific Catastrophe Risk Assessment and Financing Initiative estimates the region requires $5.6 billion annually for adaptation—sea walls, relocating communities, desalination plants, cyclone-resistant infrastructure. Current funding meets approximately 11% of this need.

Part of the problem is delivery. Pacific governments often lack the bureaucratic capacity to absorb and administer large climate funds, which require environmental impact assessments, procurement processes, and multi-year project management. Donors know this, and use it as justification for routing funds through their own contractors—meaning much of the money never reaches Pacific hands. A 2025 Oxfam audit found that 68 cents of every dollar in Australian Pacific climate aid was spent on Australian consultants, logistics, or tied procurement. China's approach is faster but extractive: Chinese state firms build the infrastructure, Chinese workers do the labour, and the host nation incurs debt.

What should be done

The first requirement is honesty. Pacific island nations are bargaining chips in a contest they did not choose and cannot win. If Australia, the United States, and their allies consider the Pacific strategically vital, they should fund genuine adaptation and offer meaningful migration pathways—not as charity, but as the price of influence. An Australian commitment to accept 50,000 Pacific climate migrants over a decade, coupled with A$5 billion in adaptation funding administered through Pacific institutions, would cost less than a single AUKUS submarine and deliver far more regional stability.

Second, the international community must clarify the legal status of climate-displaced nations. The UN General Assembly should adopt a protocol recognising the continuity of statehood for submerged nations, preserving their maritime zones and treaty rights. Tuvalu's digital-nation gambit may seem absurd, but it reflects a legitimate fear: that disappearance from the map means disappearance from international law. Precedent exists—governments-in-exile retained legal standing during the Second World War. The principle can be extended.

Third, donors should fund adaptation through Pacific-led institutions, not foreign contractors. The Pacific Islands Forum Secretariat, the Pacific Community, and national governments must have direct control over budgets and implementation. Capacity-building is slower than flying in expatriate consultants, but it is the only model that builds resilience rather than dependency.

A sobering conclusion

The tragedy of the Pacific is that it matters too much strategically and too little politically. If the islands were valueless to Beijing, Washington, and Canberra, they might at least be ignored in peace. Instead, they are courted, pressured, and instrumentalised—but not saved. The bases will be built. The sea will continue rising. And when the last atoll goes under, the strategic competition will simply move to the next piece of contested ground. The people who lived there will become a footnote in someone else's history. This is not a policy failure. It is a choice.