The Republic of the Maldives is an island nation located in the Indian Ocean and Arabian Sea. On 17 October 2009 President Mohammed Nasheed and 13 government officials held an underwater cabinet meeting in Girifushi to call international attention to the threat of global warming on the island nation. The low-lying network of islands averages an elevation of less than one meter above sea level, which puts it at risk of the climate change-induced sea-level rises predicted to occur. The UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) predicts that by the year 2100 the Republic of the Maldives will be uninhabitable due to rising sea levels. In recent years, the occurrence of tropical storms has also increased which threatens the safety of residents living on the islands. At the cabinet meeting under the sea, officials signed a document asking all countries to reduce their carbon dioxide emissions, which was presented in Denmark at the Copenhagen Climate Change Conference in December 2009. Signing the document underwater was a means of raising attention to the severity of climate change.
Contributed by Christina Garcia
Course: Modern Global Environmental History
Instructor: Dr. Wilko Graf von Hardenberg
University of Wisconsin–Madison, US
- Nash, J. Madeleine. 2005. "Where the Waters Are RISING." Time 165, no. 17: 46-50. Military & Government Collection, EBSCOhost
- Sovacool, Benjamin K. "Expert Views of Climate Change Adaptation in the Maldives." Climatic Change 114, no. 2 (2012): 295–300.