Pacific Islanders relocate to Australia to escape rising seas

Australia's new Pacific Engagement Visa (PEV) lottery allows Pacific Islanders, whose coastal homes are sinking under rising seas because of climate change, to apply to become permanent residents each year.

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By 2050, NASA scientists project daily tides will submerge half the main atoll of Funafuti, home to 60% of Tuvalu's residents, where villagers cling to a strip of land as narrow as 20 metres (65 feet) in some places.

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New Zealand introduced a similar visa in 2002 called the Pacific Access Category visa ballot, allowing up to 650 citizens from Kiribati, Tuvalu, Tonga or Fiji to receive permanent residency each year.

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Tuvalu has its own visa scheme under the PEV programme, which Australia has described as the "first agreement of its kind anywhere in the world, providing a pathway for mobility with dignity as climate impacts worsen".