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Surrounded by coconut palms on all sides, every house had turned into rubble.

Despite wide interest in the global footprint of palm crops, the distribution of coconut palms across tropical Pacific atolls has received little attention.

Over the past decade, so many property owners in this sparsely populated region of coconut palms and banana trees were eager to cash in that the number of birdhouses here jumped fivefold, Mr. Zulkibli said.

There was a simple wooden seesaw in the middle of the lot, and a dried-out coconut palm listed in the back.

It offered a view of a vast lagoon speckled with rusted fishing ships that bring in tuna, and the coconut palms that fringe the thin circle of land that makes up the Marshalls’ main atoll.