Fiji, Sept. 28 -- default

For Fiji's Ambassador to the United Nations, rising seas threaten more than coastlines. They threaten the bonds between people, place and identity - and his country's experience offers lessons in protecting them.

Filipo Tarakinikini knows what it means for a community to leave home.

Long before he became Fiji's Ambassador to the United Nations, he grew up hearing stories about the floods that forced his own community to move.

In the 1950s, Delailasakau and Naseuvou - the two villages that make up his community in Fiji's Waidina River valley - were relocated. But the memories of what was left behind endured.

"I grew up with the stories of what it cost our elders to leave the land where their ancestors lay," h...