Climate Change and Disappearing Islands: The Metaverse as a Cyber Jurisdiction – Part 2

Introduction

From part one of this article entitled “Climate Change and Disappearing Islands: Tuvalu, Sea-Level Rise and the Future of Statehood”, we discussed how climate change is threatening the existence of the sovereign island-nation of Tuvalu and its ingenious approach to preserve its sovereignty.

As the waters rise around Tuvalu and its survival as a physical state grows ever more uncertain, its leadership has turned to an unorthodox frontier: the metaverse. This bold shift — recreating Tuvalu’s cultural and political identity in a virtual space — demands a critical examination of sovereignty in cyberspace. Can international legal doctrines on territoriality, jurisdiction, and statehood be extended to digital realms? What does cyber sovereignty mean when a nation loses its geographic moorings, but not its people, its identity, or its government?

This section explores the evolving landscape of cyber jurisdiction, drawing from international law and emerging technological developments, to assess whether a country like Tuvalu can project and preserve sovereign authority in the metaverse. It also builds a theoretical bridge from climate-induced statelessness (explored in Part I) to the legal imagination required to sustain digital nationhood.

Cyberspace as a Sovereign Domain

The very origin of the term “metaverse”, coined by Neal Stephenson in Snow Crash, imagined a post-national space where digital identities transcended borders. For decades, cyberspace was treated as an ungoverned domain—decentralized, non-territorial, and largely immune from classical sovereignty claims.

However, that assumption has been significantly challenged. As noted in the Research Handbook on Cyberspace and International Law, states have gradually asserted jurisdiction over the internet based on territorial, nationality, and protective principles, and have begun extending public and private law into digital contexts.

This evolution aligns with the Tallinn Manual 2.0, which affirms that international law, including sovereignty and non-intervention, applies to cyberspace. But the challenge persists: sovereignty has traditionally been linked to land, or at least to definable and controllable space. Can the metaverse, a 3D immersive digital environment not anchored to any one physical server, serve as a sovereign domain?

Cyber Jurisdiction

According to the Sovereignty in Cyberspace: Theory and Practice report, cyberspace sovereignty can be understood across four interrelated layers. The physical layer encompasses the tangible infrastructure—servers, undersea cables, and network hardware. The logical layer refers to protocols and systems such as IP address allocation and domain name services. The application layer consists of platforms, digital services, and virtual environments like the metaverse itself. Finally, the social layer captures the interactions, norms, and communities that inhabit these digital spaces.

Tuvalu’s digital migration primarily unfolds within the application and social layers, where it seeks to preserve national identity, cultural heritage, and administrative authority using immersive technologies, blockchain systems, and virtual reality representations. Though these domains are not territorially fixed, they are organized, sustained, and responsive to governance—thus replicating key functions of a sovereign state. As some states, including France, Germany, and China, have formally recognized, sovereignty in cyberspace is not merely theoretical; it manifests as a real and enforceable claim to legal authority over digital assets, infrastructure, and behaviours, even if divorced from geographic soil.

The Legal Anatomy of Sovereignty in the Metaverse

The metaverse, as outlined in WIPO’s IP and Frontier Technologies report, is distinguished by three essential features: it is immersive, persistent, and interoperable. These characteristics mark a departure from traditional digital platforms, making the metaverse a compelling frontier for national experimentation. For Tuvalu, the immersive quality allows for the faithful recreation of cultural and symbolic landscapes. Persistence ensures that these digital environments are not fleeting but endure over time, offering a sense of stability. Interoperability, albeit still under development, supports the integration of services and interactions across platforms, laying the groundwork for robust digital governance.

From a legal standpoint, Tuvalu’s digital twin raises compelling questions around the Montevideo Convention’s criteria for statehood. The permanent population criterion is arguably satisfied through the continuity of Tuvaluan citizens dispersed globally. Though the defined territory requirement is challenged by rising seas, the creation of a geographically faithful digital twin arguably fulfils the symbolic and functional dimensions of territoriality. A functioning government persists in both analogue and digital form, enhanced by the development of digital governance tools and constitutional frameworks. As Tuvalu actively engages international forums and bilateral discussions on its metaverse strategy, it also demonstrates the capacity to enter relations with other states. These dimensions collectively suggest that a digital nation, even absent physical land, can emulate the essential attributes of statehood and perform the legal and diplomatic functions expected of sovereign entities.

The Limits of Digital Nationhood

Despite these possibilities, significant constraints remain. The current metaverse ecosystem is dominated by private corporations that own and control the infrastructure and user environments, such as Meta, Google, and Microsoft. This centralization raises profound concerns regarding data sovereignty, jurisdictional overlap, and the political independence of digital nations. While decentralized platforms such as Decentraland or Africarare promise community governance through decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs), they lack recognition under conventional international law and cannot independently engage in diplomacy or contractual obligations.

Such limitations underscore the necessity for global legal instruments and institutional frameworks that recognize and regulate digital sovereignty. Initiatives such as the UN Group of Governmental Experts (GGE) reports and emerging digital sovereignty legislation in the EU and Africa reflect a growing consensus on the applicability of international law in cyberspace. Without such frameworks, nations like Tuvalu may remain vulnerable to platform dependency and jurisdictional ambiguity, despite their innovative use of digital tools for nation preservation.

Tuvalu’s Digital Pivot

Tuvalu’s digital migration is more than a symbolic gesture; it is a sophisticated effort to rebuild the architecture of statehood in cyberspace. Through its Future Now Project, the government has commissioned high-resolution mapping of its islands using drone technology and LIDAR, thereby preserving its geographical identity in virtual form. It has initiated the drafting of a digital constitution, which sets out the legal and governance framework for its metaverse-based institutions. Civic data, including citizenship and registry functions, are being developed on blockchain infrastructure, ensuring continuity of legal identity and administrative processes. Additionally, Tuvalu is recreating its cultural landmarks and public spaces in virtual reality, serving both diplomatic and diasporic purposes.

These actions constitute a deliberate legal and political strategy to maintain Tuvalu’s status as a nation—not through military force or territorial acquisition, but through legal innovation and digital preservation. As Israa Darkazanli argues in The Metaverse and its Implications on Humanity and Digital Future, the metaverse is more than a technological novelty; it is a transformative space where memory, rights, and sovereignty can be encoded and enacted (Darkazanli, 2023). Tuvalu’s strategy exemplifies this potential, offering a working model of how stateless nations might continue to exist, interact, and assert agency in a digitally transformed world.

Tuvalu’s journey invites a radical question: Is it possible to preserve a nation without land, through law, code, and community? We will explore final part of this article, and address future of digital statehood, in Part 3.

Authors:
Dr. Enam K. Antonio, Lecturer, GIMPA Law School
Desmond Israel, Esq. Lecturer, GIMPA Law School & Partner (Cyberlaw & Technology Practice) AGNOS Legal Company