Against Emissions: Maldives Signs Memo inside the Sea

Dr. Abdul Ruff Colachal

Badly threatened by the casual attitude displayed by world powers in containing the terrific climate change issue, the island Maldives government has embarked upon several measures to face the climate disorder issue head on. Maldives government of President Mohamed Nasheed has decided to draw the attention of the funny, irresponsible world leaders who play hide and seek games on tackling the impending climatic disorder that would dissolve many island nations, including Maldives, by holing a cabinet meeting, for the first time in human history, in underwaters.

The government of the Maldives has held a cabinet meeting about five metres (16ft) underwater to highlight the threat of global warming. President Mohamed Nasheed and his cabinet signed a document calling for global cuts in carbon emissions. Each minister was accompanied by a diving instructor and a military minder. Ministers spent half an hour on the sea bed and communicated with white boards and hand signals. While underwater, they signed a document ahead of the UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen in December, calling on all nations to cut their carbon emissions. World leaders at the summit aim to create a new agreement to replace the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012.

On Friday, ministers carried out practice dives off the island of Girifushi, about 20 minutes by speed boat from the island capital, Male and dived six metres (20 feet) for the dress rehearsal. The government had arranged a horse-shoe shaped table at the bottom of the sea for the ministers to hold the cabinet meeting on 17 October during which they will communicate using white boards and hand signals. Cabinet ministers in full scuba gear in the Maldives dived in their final rehearsals Friday ahead of an underwater cabinet meeting this weekend aimed at drawing attention to the dangers of global warming for the island nation. Coordinator of the event said the ministers would sign their wet suits which would then be auctioned on the protectmaldives.com website to raise money to protect coral reefs in the archipelago.

The Maldivian archipelago, located south west of Sri Lanka, is on the front line of climate change and has become a vocal campaigner in the battle to halt rising sea levels. In 2007, the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warned that a rise in sea levels of 18 to 59 centimetres (seven to 23 inches) by 2100 would be enough to make the Maldives virtually uninhabitable. More than 80 percent of the country's land, composed of coral islands scattered about 850 kilometres (530 miles) across the equator, is less than one metre above mean sea level.

The largest atmospheric polluters are the also the greatest democracies, like USA and India - the newly wedded nuclear partners. All arrangements were meticulously planned by the climatically threatened state is fully prepared to have 17 October Saturday's cabinet meeting underwater. Officials from the low-lying island nation say the dive is "a bit of fun", intended to send a serious message. Maldivian officials said the idea to hold the attention-grabbing underwater cabinet meeting came from President Mohamed Nasheed when he was asked by a 350.org activist group to support its "environmental day" action on October 24. "The group asked if the Maldives can hold an underwater banner supporting environmental day," an official from the president's office said. "The president thought for a while and then came up with the idea to have an underwater cabinet meeting."

President Nasheed and other cabinet members taking part had been practising their slow breathing to get into the right mental frame for the meeting. Obviously, the Maldives is trying to showcase e their collective anger to the G20 etc that keep meeting at different venues, have sumptuous dinners, pose for fantastic group photos and give interviews to their national media to show in big pictures how important their leaders are, while leaving the climatic change unattended seriously and unresolved by the atmospheric polluter criminal states led by USA, China and India. International community is yet to react.

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Dr. Abdul Ruff Colachal

Specialist on State Terrorism

Independent Columnist in International Affairs, Research Scholar (JNU) &

the only Indian to have gone through entire India, a fraud and terror nation in South Asia.