PHOTO NEWS: World’s first floating country

THE world’s first floating nation will set sail in the Pacific Ocean off the island of Tahiti in 2020, it has been claimed.

A group called The Seasteading Institute is planning to start building a city on a seaborne platform in 2019.

The US firm has signed an agreement with the French Polynesia’s government and is backed by PayPal founder Peter Thiel.

Joe Quirk, president of the Seasteading Institute, hopes that thousands of floating nations will set sail by 2050, populated by people who want to set their own rules and live free of meddlesome bosses, politicians and bureaucrats.

He previously set out his vision in a book called “Seasteading: How Floating Nations Will Restore The Environment, Enrich The Poor, Cure The Sick and Liberate Humanity From Politicians.”

“Governments just don’t get better,” Quirk told the New York Times.

‘They’re stuck in previous centuries. That’s because land incentivises a violent monopoly to control it.”

Construction experts at the Seasteading Institute have spent five years in trying to work out how to build “permanent, innovative communities floating at sea”.

Rising sea levels pose a threat to the 118 islands which form French Polynesia.

Further investigations into the economic, environmental and legal impact of the scheme are now due to take place.

Randolph Hencken, executive director of the institute, previously said: “What we’re interested in is societal choice and having a location where we can try things that haven’t been tried before.

“I don’t think it will be that dramatically radical in the first renditions.

“We were looking for sheltered waters, we don’t want to be out in the open ocean – it’s technologically possible but economically outrageous to afford.

“If we can be behind a reef break, then we can design floating platforms that are sufficient for those waters at an affordable cost. We don’t have to start from scratch as this is a pilot project.

“They also have very stable institutions so we’re able to work with a government that wants us there, that we have respect for and they have respect for us.”

Randolph added that he was confident the project could benefit the French Polynesia’s economy – and draw in a fresh wave of tourism.