I-Kiribati now live with the reality of marawa rising. This is the time of bibitakin kanoan boong—“change in weather over many days”—the Kiribati phrase for climate change. The people live with the fear and uncertainty of those words. How can they not feel afraid when the world keeps telling them that low-lying island countries like theirs will soon be underwater? Their own leaders have said that Kiribati—33 coral islands in an expanse of the central Pacific larger than India—is “among the most vulnerable of the vulnerable.” They have predicted that Tarawa atoll, the nation’s capital, will become uninhabitable within a generation.

http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2015/11/climate-change/kiribati-against-the-tide-text