The Maldives are vanishing under rising sea levels

The 300, 000 residents of the Maldives may soon be homeless if climate change continues at its current pace.

Their president-elect, Mohamed Nasheed, has announced plans to purchase a new homeland for his people as their entire country is threatened by rising sea levels.

The Maldives consist of around 1000 islands and coral atolls, which at their highest point rise less than 2 metres above the Indian Ocean.  It is the lowest nation on earth, and over the past hundred years the water has risen by 20 cm around the archipelago.  The United Nations warns that sea levels could rise by another 60 cm globally over the next century, which would leave this idyllic tourist destination uninhabitable.

The Maldives’ tourism industry is worth billions of dollars a year.  Nasheed intends to tap into this huge revenue to create a “sovereign wealth fund.”  The money will be used to purchase lands in other countries to which his people can move should their homes eventually vanish underwater.  Candidates include India and Sri Lanka, which are similar in terms of culture and climate, and possibly Australia, because of of the vast amounts of uninhabited land available.

Nasheed, who is the country’s first democratically elected president and a noted human rights campaigner, says that the plan is “an insurance policy for the worst possible outcome.  We do not want to leave the Maldives, but we also do not want to be climate refugees living in tents for decades.”  So far, he says, the countries he has approached have been “receptive” to the idea.

Tom Picken, a climate change expert for the organization Friends of the Earth, calls the move “an unprecedented wake-up call.  The Maldives is left to fend for itself.  It is a victim of climate change caused by rich countries.”

The Maldives is currently in transition from the old autocratic regime under Mamoum Abdul Gayoom to Nasheed’s new democracy.  The president-elect also seeks to rectify the huge gap between rich and poor and the country’s problems with drug use and unemployment.