Climate refugees will have to find new homes. I would imagine New Zealand and Tahiti would absorb the couple-thousand people as they are the closest larger Pacific Island nations. Australia is less friendly to immigrants.
I believe they sold the rights to some US company who is now managing the tld.
They specifically decided to profit off the fact that's it's an attractive tld, unlike tld like .ly and .ml where the country never intended for their tld to get a wide use.