Maldives: Underwater Cabinet Meeting

The government of the Maldives held its first underwater cabinet meeting on 17^th October 2009 to attract international attention to the dangers of global warming. The Maldives, located southwest of Sri Lanka, has become a vocal campaigner in the battle to halt rising sea levels. Most of the island nation, a tourist paradise featuring coral reefs and white sand beaches, lies less just over three feet above sea level and in 2007, the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) warned that a rise in sea levels of seven to 24 inches by 2100 would be enough to make the country virtually uninhabitable. President Mohamed Nasheed, dressed in full scuba gear, conducted the 30-minute meeting at a depth of 20 feet off the coast just north of the capital Male. The government arranged a horseshoe-shaped table on the seabed for the ministers, who communicated using white boards and hand signals. The Divers Association of Maldives said the ministers, who had trained over the past two months, felt confident about the unprecedented meeting. As bubbles floated up from their face masks, the president, vice president, cabinet secretary and 11 ministers signed a document calling on all countries to cut their carbon dioxide emissions. The issue had taken on urgency ahead of the UN Climate Change Conference held in December in Copenhagen, where the countries negotiated a successor to the Kyoto Protocol with aims to cut the emission of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide that scientists blame for causing global warming by trapping heat in the atmosphere. President Nasheed had already announced plans for a fund to buy a new homeland for his people if the 1192 low-lying coral islands are submerged. He has promised to make the Maldives, with a population of 350,000, the world's first carbon-neutral nation within a decade.

Source: Telegraph, 17^th October 2009