[logfromblammo]

The time is now to dredge and dump, and build fixed oceanic platforms at their territorial extremes, while the construction crews can still breathe air and weld cheaply.

The only motivation any other country has to preserve the EEZ of Tuvalu is to prevent Chinese fishermen from overfishing that part of the ocean into a dead zone, or Chinese excavators drilling all the oil/minerals out of the seabed. So they should play up that aspect, and then they may attract the necessary investment to make a big enough pile of sand at the right coordinates.