You won’t find many pundits or news junkies in the Maldives, a scattered nation of 1200 atolls in the Indian Ocean. There aren’t climate change skeptics, massive industrial projects, or vast electric grids. With only 200 inhabited islands, the Maldives is the most disparate nation on the planet. Nevertheless, it will someday be known as the first nation to be completely submerged underwater. There isn’t room for climate change skepticism in a land where everything–cities, resorts, villages–will be swallowed by the sea.
Once known as “The Island Kingdom,” the world’s smallest Muslim nation only exists 1.5 meters above sea level. As climate change specialists have recently noted, Arctic ice is melting at a faster rate than anyone expected. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change predicts that sea levels could rise by 25-58cm…just by 2100. And that’s just if we continue on the way we do. As China and India continue to modernize, it’s very possible for global warming to actually accelerate. . The International Herald Tribune notes, “the journals Science, Nature Geoscience and Nature have all published articles featuring estimates that exceed two feet, some saying that rises could be as much as five feet by the end of the century.” The article quotes University of Potsdam professor Stefan Rahmstorf, who says, “The rise to 2100 is just the beginning of a much higher sea-level rise. This is a real long-term effect that we are setting into motion. It will continue.” Rahmstorf says he believes the increase could be as great as 1.4 meters, or four and a half feet, by 2100. There aren’t many options for the Maldives. Build walls around 200 islands? The Climate Change report also claims that temperature levels in the South Pacific region will increase 14% by 2060. Food security and water resources will be severely threatened. The Maldives will have the dubious honor of being the first nation to be forced to move because of a man-made ecological disaster. And so the exodus begins. Every year, tourist dollars will be funneled to a homeland fund. Currently, it’s reported that the Maldives are considering locations in Sri Lanka, Australia, and India. For a people whose strongest identifiers are as fishermen and seafarers, the prospect is daunting. Another option is to seriously fortify six or seven smaller atolls, and relocate the population to these new islands, as Male sinks. A few government officials even advocated sending every Maldives citizen out into the world with $300,000 and a passport, as “environmental refugees.” There’s another option, of course. And that’s to seriously change the way we generate and use energy, so that nations like the Maldives won’t become the world’s Atlantis. The nation’s first democratically elected president, Mohamed Nasheed, has pledged to make the Maldives entirely carbon-neutral within a decade. That’s more of a challenge than you’d think, even for a sparsely populated country like this. There might only be 365,000 people on the square mile of Male, the Maldives’ island capital, but half of them exist on less than a dollar a day. Only 200 islands are inhabited, but they’re home to 90 of the most expensive resorts in the world, where prices often exceed $1000 per night. As GQ notes, “Though the cost of the proposed refit—155 wind turbines, half a square kilometer of rooftop solar panels, biomass plants burning coconut husks—would exceed the expected revenue for the homeland fund, it makes twisted sense for the young leader to promote both.” Alternative energy, or alternative homeland? Apocalyptic statements aside, the Maldives’ president chooses to swim, rather than sink. To draw attention to the island nation’s plight, Nasheed convened the first underwater parliament in fall of 2009. The president-elect required all of his cabinet officials to learn how to scuba dive before the underwater meeting. The cabinet meeting took place around a sixteen foot desk. Using hand signals, the officials all signed a declaration calling for global cut in carbon emissions, to be presented at the United Nations conference on climate change last week. It’s not just the Maldives that will be in trouble, either. Nations like Amsterdam are also in a perilous situation if sea levels continue to rise. And according to a recent World Bank study, “it will cost developing countries USD 75 billion to a 100 billion a year for the next 40 years to adapt to climate change.” That’s not just island nations, either. “We need to learn more about what’s happening with the earth,” Nasheed said to the New York Times. “The world might not be that safe. We might not survive. We don’t know exactly what will happen…If these scientists are not able to save the Maldives, then they won’t be able to save the world.”
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