Maldives, facing a grave threat of being swamped by the rising sea levels, appealed for concerted action on climate change when its Cabinet held the world’s first underwater meeting to highlight the danger posed to low-lying nations by global warming. The Maldivian Cabinet met at the bottom of the sea on Saturday to frame an SOS to global leaders to save their atoll nation from being submerged by the rising seas.A declaration approved at the end of a 25-minute meeting, presided by President Mohammad Nasheed, called for global action to combat climate change. It will be presented at the Copenhagen climate summit in December.
The declaration said global warming was sending the ice caps crashing into the sea, leading to sharp rise in water levels, the Presidential spokesperson said over phone from Male.The 42-year-old President of this picturesque group of coral islands and his Cabinet colleagues, wearing face masks, scuba-dived to their underwater rendezvous held six metres below the surface of a lagoon off Girifushi island, about 35 nautical miles from capital Male. They spent 45 minutes sitting across tables immersed to the sea bottom.Mr. Nasheed and his colleagues used white boards and hand signals to communicate their decisions. While the Ministers had undergone diving courses for the past two months to keep their underwater date, Mr. Nasheed was an experienced diver, the spokesperson said. The Maldivian Ministers went to these extraordinary lengths as a United Nations panel on climate change had warned that even a rise in sea levels between 18 and 60 cm would submerge the islands by 2100.Maldives comprises more than 100 islands scattered over 800 km across the equator, and 90 per cent of them are just a metre above sea level.
The Hindu, 19th October 2009
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