Kiribati is a loose geographic collection of a single coral island and 32 atolls, spread out over 1,351,000 square miles of ocean. Only the coral island, Banaba, has any features that are more than 10 feet above sea level. Kiribati is home to the world's largest atoll.
The 2005 Census indicated there were 92,533 people living on the Kiribati islands. Most of the population is Christian, with more than half the population being Catholic. The median age is around 20, making the population quite young.
The government is a democracy with a president and a unicameral legislature. There is no military, and the islands are protected only by a small police force. The islands were once a major center for phosphate mining, but these supplies were exhausted. The major hard currency earners are tourism and fishing. In 2008, the GDP per capita in purchasing power parity terms was $6,112.
No one is really sure when humans first moved into the islands, with estimates ranging between 3000 BC and 1300 AD. Furthermore, no one knows for certain who "discovered" the islands for the west, with logs and charts indicating the islands starting in the late eighteenth Century. The British called them the Gilbert Islands, and they became a British protectorate in 1892, and then a crown colony. Occupied by the Japanese during the Second World War, the islands saw much fighting, including the bloody battle of Tarawa. The islands became formally independent in 1979.
Sea levels are currently rising at the rate of a tenth of an inch per year, but this is widely predicted to increase in the future. That might not seem like much, but for people who live on a small atoll in the Central Pacific that sits roughly a foot above sea level, a sea rise of just a few inches combined with waves will put their home underwater whenever the tide comes in. In 2008, the president of Kiribati formally asked the governments of New Zealand and Australia to accept his people as permanent environmental refugees.
