Mark Hertsgaard writes:

Mohammed Nasheed made global headlines in 2009 by convening the world’s first underwater cabinet meeting. As president of the Maldives, a nation of 1,138 low-lying islands south-west of India, Nasheed donned scuba gear and descended beneath the waves with 13 government ministers. The officials used waterproof pencils to sign a document urging the world to slash carbon dioxide emissions so the Maldives would not disappear beneath rising seas.

“If the Maldives cannot be saved today, we do not feel that there is much of a chance for the rest of the world,” Nasheed told reporters.

Today, Nasheed is the speaker of parliament in the Maldives and the global south’s ambassador to the Cop26 climate conference. He continues to warn that anything more than 1.5C of global warming “is a death sentence” for his country and other low-lying regions around the world. To illustrate what the last 12 years of rising temperatures have brought, he recalls the lagoon where he held that famous underwater cabinet meeting.

“If you go to the same spot [today], you will see the reef is far more dead, bleached, than it was,” Nasheed said in Glasgow this week. Dead reefs lead to coastal erosion, which wipes out homes and schools and contaminates freshwater sources; the Maldives now spends 30% of its government budget adapting to climate change, including vast sums to desalinate water, he added. [Continue reading…]