Excerpts from Books and Wikipedia
"Kiribati (...) is a sovereign state in Micronesia in the central Pacific Ocean. The permanent population is just over 110,000 (2015), more than half of whom live on Tarawa Atoll. The state comprises 32 atolls and reef islands and one raised coral island, Banaba. They have a total land area of 800 square kilometres (310 sq mi) and are dispersed over 3.5 million square kilometres (1.3 million square miles). . . . Kiribati became independent from the United Kingdom in 1979. The capital, South Tarawa, which is now the most populated area, consists of a number of islets, connected by a series of causeways. These comprise about half the area of Tarawa Atoll. Kiribati is a member of the Pacific Community (SPC), Commonwealth of Nations, the IMF, and the World Bank, and became a full member of the United Nations in 1999." [Wikipedia] "Take, for example, the country of Kiribati, consisting of three main island groups that lie across Micronesia and Polynesia (Fig. 12-4). The average elevation of Kiribati’s 33 islands is 2 meters (6.5 ft), and, like all other low islands in this realm, they are particularly susceptible to rising sea level driven by global warming." [Geography: Realms, Regions, and Concepts, 17th Edition, p. 483]