To call attention to the threat that global warming poses for his island country, President Mohamed Nasheed of the Maldives has ordered his cabinet ministers to prepare to meet underwater and sign an international treaty cutting greenhouse gas emissions. Government officials have been squeezing into wetsuits for scuba training—which Nasheed has skipped because of his experience as a diver—so they’re ready for the October 17 cabinet session. 

 

Nasheed’s underwater-meeting idea follows his earlier declarations to make the Maldives the world’s first carbon neutral country within 10 years—and to find a new home for his 330,000 countrymen in the event rising ocean levels flood the archipelago of 1,200 islands located in the Indian Ocean. About 80% of the Maldives are only a meter above sea level, and a UN study on climate change has warned that the country could become submerged by the beginning of the next century.

 

Maldives Cabinet Meets Underwater to Stress Threat from Rising Sea Levels (by Andrew Buncombe, The Independent)

Entire Nation Plans to Move (AllGov)