Kanton Island, the one inhabited island in this group, welcomes visitors if you get permission from the PIPA office in Tarawa. Kiribati's fragile environment necessitates responsible tourism.

“We are not victims,” Toka Rakobu, who works for a Tarawa tourism agency, told me. “We can do something. We are not going to be a defeated people.” Tarawa’s two slender chains of islets ...