While Donald Trump shocked the world by admitting that he is entertaining purchasing the world’s largest island, Greenland, from Denmark, regardless of the fact that it is not for sale, there are other island moves taking place in the Middle East, Indian Ocean, South Pacific, and elsewhere. What makes Trump’s obsession unique is that Trump appears to think that an island like Greenland that is under duress from global warming is prime for a hostile takeover bid. While that may be a business strategy in Trump’s cut-throat world of high-end real estate, it is not acceptable in the world of diplomacy and international relations.

When a Manhattan hotel is sold, the purchase agreement does not include all of the hotel’s occupants. Greenland’s population is 57,000, 88 percent of whom are native Inuit. There is little chance that the Inuit citizens of Greenland would want to become part of a country whose president repeatedly calls a US senator “Pocahontas” and disparages the treaty rights of Native American tribal nations. Nor would the Inuit, as well as the ethnic Danish minority, want to sacrifice their top-notch national health care system for one of the worst in the industrialized world.

Another strategic island, Socotra, which lies in an important shipping channel in the Gulf of Aden, is currently a highly-contested prize between the United Arab Emirates, the internationally-recognized government of the Yemen Arab Republic – exiled in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, the South Yemeni secessionist Southern Transition Council (STC) – which is backed by the UAE and seeks restoral of South Yemen’s former independent status, and the British colonial era Mahra State of Qishn and Socotra, which is supported by Oman, where the pretender to the throne of Qishn and Socotra, Sheikh Abdullah Al Afrar, is headquartered when he is not present in Socotra. Socotrans have grown tired of the presence of Emirati and Saudi troops on their pristine island, called the “Galapagos of the Indian Ocean” due to the presence of flora and fauna not found anywhere else in the world. During the final 75 years of the Mahra State, the Mahra sultans ruled their British protectorate from Hadiboh, the capital city of Socotra.

There are significant historical links between the Mahra and Omani sultans and Omani Sultan Qaboos bin Said has avoided participation in the Saudi-led coalition that is battling Houthi-led rebels who have taken control of much of North Yemen. The UAE, which took over control of Socotra’s airport and seaport, views Socotra as a key link between the UAE, the Horn of Africa, and the Red Sea. There has been some talk of the UAE leasing Socotra for 99 years. However, just as Greenland and Denmark have told Washington that Greenland is not for sale, the Socotrans and Mahra State, backed by Oman, have told Abu Dhabi that Socotra is not for lease.

To the south in the Indian Ocean, the UN General Assembly voted on May 22, 2019 to set a six-month deadline for the United Kingdom to withdraw from the Chagos Archipelago, which is claimed by Mauritius. In 1967, the British expelled the native Chagossians from the archipelago to make way for a major US military base on Diego Garcia. Mauritius, which became home to many Chagossian refugees, wants the original inhabitants resettled on their islands. London and Washington are balking at any such notion.

While Borneo, the world’s third largest island after Greenland and New Guinea, is part of Indonesia, the announcement by Indonesian President Joko Widodo that Indonesia will move its capital city from Jakarta to the northeastern part of Borneo will forever change the nature of Borneo. Half of Jakarta is currently below sea-level, a situation that has been caused by a combination of depletion of ground water and rising sea levels due to climate change. Current plans are to move Indonesia’s capital to a forested area between the East Kalimantan province cities of Balikpapan and Samarinda.

The new capital will be close to Eastern Malaysia’s states of Sabah and Sarawak and the Sultanate of Brunei. Like the Amazon Basin, East Kalimantan province’s rain forests have also earned it the title of “lungs of the world.” Environmentalists are concerned about the effect the new capital city will have on forest destruction, an issue that currently plagues the Malaysian state of Sarawak. Borneo is home to three secessionist movements. The Kalimantan Dayaks and Malays favor independence or unification with Malaysia. However, there are also nascent secessionist movements in Sarawak and Sabah that seek a complete break with Peninsular Malaysia. It remains to be seen how Indonesia’s new capital will be viewed by Kalimantan secessionists.

Two uninhabited islands in the Red Sea between Saudi Arabia and Egypt, Tiran and Sanafir, have been the subject of a virtual tug-of-war between the Saudis and Egyptians. In 2016, Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi said during a press conference with visiting Saudi King Salman, that the two islands would be transferred to Saudi Arabia. The Saudis insisted that they only temporarily transferred administration of Tiran and Sanafir to Egypt in 1950 in order to protect the islands from being occupied by Israel. In 1956, Israel did occupy the islands, but they were transferred back to Egypt following the 1978 Camp David accord between Israel and Egypt.

In response to the transfer of the islands, Egyptian protesters demanded that the Egyptian government not go through with the deal because it violated the terms of the Egyptian Constitution, which requires a national referendum is required before any change to Egypt’s borders. The Saudis plan to build a causeway via the two islands linking Saudi Arabia to Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula. Many Egyptians are keenly aware that the Saudi military crossed the Saudi causeway with Bahrain to help brutally put down a popular revolt by Bahraini citizens. They fear the same will occur with the Saudi causeway to Egypt.

Global climate change also resulted in one government, that of the rising sea level threatened South Pacific nation of Kiribati, to purchase land on the Fijian island of Vanua Levu that in the future would become the home to Kiribati’s climate change refugees and become an ex-situ seat of government for Kiribati. The 6,000 acres bought in 2014 by Kiribati’s then-president, Anote Tong, was seen as a model for how other threatened nations, including Tuvalu, Nauru, and Maldives, might maintain their identity and independence long after they disappeared beneath the waves. Tong called the project “migration with dignity.” Tong’s successor, Taneti Mamau, changed Tong’s plans. Rather than move to higher ground on Vanua Levu, Mamau now favors dealing with climate change effects in Kiribati. He said he favors leaving the future of Kiribati and the I-Kiribati people in God’s hands. That comes as little comfort to the people of the crowded Kiribati capital in South Tarawa, Abaiang, and other islands dealing with the effects of saltwater contamination of fresh ground water, ruined crops, and inundated houses.

From Washington and Jakarta to Copenhagen and Abu Dhabi island fever has taken hold with new real estate development plans at the forefront of major political and financial decisions.

Although the old-school name plates continue to be used in the 15-member Security Council and other specialized agencies of the world body, for example, the World Health Assembly in Geneva and UNESCO in Paris, a few keystrokes can now eliminate a member of the General Assembly. Of course, such an action takes the agreement of the Security Council but considering the number of UN member states that have disappeared entirely or have undergone name changes since 1945, the process has been made much easier by digitization.

Somewhere in a dimly-lit storage room at the UN lies the discarded name plates of Yugoslavia, Tanganyika, the Ukrainian SSR, Byelorussian SSR, Czechoslovakia, Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, the United Arab Republic, Ceylon, German Democratic Republic, Zaire, Upper Volta, Democratic Yemen, Libyan Arab Jamahiriya, Federation of Malaya, Ivory Coast, Central African Empire, Dahomey, Laos, Malagasy Republic, Democratic Kampuchea, Union of South Africa, and Zanzibar. More recently added to the dusty collection of name plates were Swaziland and the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (F.Y.R.O.M).

According to informed sources in Sikkim, invaded by and absorbed into India in the early 1970s, there was a name plate crafted for the country at the UN before the Indian invasion. It was believed Sikkim would soon be joining, with the support of neighboring Nepal and Bhutan, as either a full member or observer state. The public may never no how many other aspirant but still-born nations were ready to be accepted into the UN as members. On June 26, 1960, the colony of British Somaliland briefly became the independent “State of Somaliland” and was recognized by 35 nations, many of them UN members. On July 1, 1960, Somaliland merged with the newly independent former Trust Territory of Somalia to form the Somali Republic. In 1991, Somaliland re-declared its independence, but it received no recognition from any other state and its request to join the UN was rejected. In 1963, the UN was also prepared to accept Sarawak and Sabah as member states had a UN-sponsored survey determined that the two former British colonies did not want to join the Federation of Malaysia.

The UN currently has 193 member states. However, when the drastic effects of climate change are taken into consideration, several of these states, threatened by rising sea levels and total desertification may end up as discarded members of the UN, not because of political changes but due to the rapidly altering environment, turning them into “failed” or “extinct” states.

Four UN member states, Tuvalu, Kiribati, the Marshall Islands, and Maldives, face inundation by the sea of current global temperature increases remain unabated. How will international law deal with countries that no longer qualify under international law – codified by the Montevideo Convention – as states? The Montevideo Convention defines the following minimum requirements for statehood: a permanent population, a defined territory, a government, and the capacity to enter into relations with the other states. If Tuvalu, Kiribati, the Marshall Islands, and Maldives sink below the ocean, do they remain qualified to be members of the UNJ and other international bodies? According to the Montevideo Convention, without territory and a permanent population, these nations would be “key-stroked” from the United Nations. Possibly, they could only remain as member states if their populations were moved to another defined parcel of land having well-defined independence from whatever country ceded to them governable territory.

One example of a sovereign entity lacking territory and population is the Sovereign Military Order of Malta, a Roman Catholic religious order that occupies a palace and villa in Rome. In 1798, the order was expelled by the French from its home in Malta. The order has diplomatic relations with 108 states and issues its own passports, license plates, stamps, and coins. Although the order lost its territory in Malta in 1798, a requirement for statehood under the Montevideo Convention, it enjoys official observer status at the United Nations and it participates in the annual plenary session of the UN General Assembly.

The entire Tuvalu chain in the Pacific Ocean rises to no more than 15 feet above sea level. Rising sea levels, disastrous tides, and storms have inundated arable land and threatened natural supplies of fresh water. There have been proposals to move the nation’s 10,000 people to another more environmentally secure location. Tuvalu is definitely in extremis. If the airstrip of Funafuti International Airport is washed away, Tuvalu will lose an important commercial lifeline to the rest of the world. One small island, in the atoll of Nukufetau, has already disappeared under the waves and others are in imminent peril. Some 2000 Tuvaluans have migrated to New Zealand, where there have been some proposals to carve out a Tuvaluan enclave that cold accept the remainder of Tuvalu’s population as climate refugees. However, as in other countries, New Zealand has an anti-immigration political grouping, composed of both white Europeans and native Maoris, that oppose any welcoming mat for displaced islanders from Tuvalu, Kiribati, and other endangered island states in the Pacific.

In May 2019, UN Secretary General António Guterres, standing alongside Tuvalu Prime Minister Enele Sosene Sopoaga at a press conference in Funafuti, called for international action to save Tuvalu. In the face of outright climate science denial from Donald Trump, Brazil’s Jair Bosolaro, and other antediluvian policy makers, Guterres and Tuvalu have an uphill climb. With total ignorance of the current climate change crisis by the Trump administration, Guterres might do better to amend international law and the UN Charter to mitigate the effects of climate change for Tuvalu and other endangered member states. One solution might be to eliminate the territorial requirements required for statehood and, thus, UN membership, which would permit countries like Tuvalu to survive as “virtual” states even if its territory is inundated by rising sea levels.

Other endangered nations have higher populations to consider if they become submerged. Plans for virtual continuation of statehood would have consider the 100,000 people of Kiribati. As with Tuvalu, arable farming land in Kiribati is being affected by the inundation of sea water, particularly on islands like Abaiang and Anterea. Some Australian right-wing politicians have actually made jokes about water lapping at the doors of citizens of South Pacific island nations. Island political leaders find no humor in their jokes as their very survival as nations and peoples hangs in the balance.

The construction of sea walls and reclamation of land from the sea, which has been practiced in the Netherlands and the United Arab Emirates, may be too little and too late in the Marshall Islands. In any event, there are proposals to consolidate the 55,000 Marshallese into a few protected islands and abandon others to the sea. This, of course, will tear many Marshallese from their ancestral islands, some of which were previously ravaged by US nuclear weapons testing after World War II.

In the Indian Ocean, the 1,192 islands of the Maldives lie, for the most part, at no more than 3.3 feet above seal level. That makes Maldives the absolute flattest nation on the planet. Only 358 islands in the Maldives are populated, with most living in the capital city of Malé on North Malé Atoll. In 2008, Maldives President Mohamed Nasheed suggested the establishment of a Maldives sovereign wealth fund, enriched by tourism taxes, to purchase a new homeland for the 380,000 people of the vast island chain. Nasheed’s suggestion was one of relatively few advanced by the leaders of endangered island states. The creation of new homelands for entire countries due to climate change cannot be adequately addressed by current international law. But action is urgently required to deal with this scenario on both the environmental and legal fronts.