This is The Guardian.

Hi, I'm David Wolf and I'm the editor of the Guardian Long Read.

This December, we're choosing a few of our favourite pieces from the year.

This week I've chosen Life in a Sinking Nation,

Tuvalu's Dreams of Dry Land by Attle Dave.

Over the past year or two, I've become increasingly convinced

that surprise is the key to good journalism.

And what I find so often

is that when a writer has the time and resources to do the reporting on a story, what they

find actually always is unexpected. And that's what I like so much about this story by

Atul Dave. It's a piece about the Pacific Island of Tuvalu, which is often seen as one of the places

in the world most threatened

by climate change. Some estimates suggest the whole nation could be fully submerged underwater

by the end of the century. Tuvalu got a lot of attention in 2022 when it announced that it was

responding to this threat by becoming a digital nation. What exactly this meant remained vague,

but the media were very excited by the idea of the world's first digital nation. People connected

it to the idea of the metaverse, though again, it was all a little vague what this meant.

And so Atul decided to actually go to Tuvalu, one of the world's least visited places, to find

out what people living there made of it all.

And what he found is totally fascinating and unexpected.

First, the idea of digital Tuvalu turns out to be little more than a marketing gimmick.

Second, many locals are skeptical about whether the islands will become fully submerged,

...