Showing posts with label Maldives. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Maldives. Show all posts
Thursday, February 23, 2012
The Island President
This post I wrote originally appeared on Care2.com:
If you follow climate change news, then you’re likely familiar with Maldives President Mohamed Nasheed, the first democratically elected leader of the small island nation. President of the lowest country in the world, with 80% of its land rising only a meter above sea level, President Nasheed has been a global voice for action to address the climate crisis. In 2009, he and Maldives government officials held an underwater cabinet meeting to make a statement about what will happen to the island by the year 2100 if the world does not act on climate change.
In September the Maldives pledged to go carbon neutral by 2020, which would make it the first nation to do so. On January 23, Radiohead’s Thom Yorke announced that the band’s music “was used to help tell the story” of President Nasheed in new documentary The Island President. This week’s news on the Maldives hasn’t been quite as positive. A military coup in what seems to have been carried out by police forced President Nasheed from office on Tuesday morning, at gunpoint and with threats of violence. He was placed under house arrest, and Bill McKibben’s organization 350.org put out an alert stating that his life could be in danger. That same day, President Nasheed’s successor, Mohammed Waheed Hassan, the former vice president, was sworn in as the President of the Maldives.
To read the rest click here - you'll be taken to the original post on Care2.com. Then head here for today's update from 350.org!
Friday, November 20, 2009
Nations Most Vulnerable to Climate Change join together @ Maldives meeting
On November 9th and 10th some of the countries most vulnerable to climate change met on Baldos Island in the Maldives for the very first meeting of the Climate Vulnerable Forum. The event was coordinated with the hope that it would inform and educate the global donor community, thereby catalyzing the financial resources they need.
Nations who had been invited to the Forum: Bangladesh, Barbados, Costa Rica, East Timor, Ethiopia, Ghana, Grenada, Guyana, Kenya, Kiribati, Lesotho, Maldives, Nepal, Philippines, Rwanda, Vanuatu, and Vietnam. President Anote Tong of Kiribati attended; most nations sent their foreign or environment ministers.
Nations who attended as observers include: China, Denmark, France, Japan, the Netherlands, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States.
President Mohamed Nasheed of the Maldives opened the Forum on November 9th with the following address.
In this speech, he invited the ministers and leaders present in the room to join him in signing a pact for the survival of their countries, instead of a "suicide pact" in Copenhagen at COP15.
The declaration, which will be presented at COP15, calls on "all other countries to follow the moral leadership shown by the Republic of Maldives by voluntarily committing to achieving carbon-neutrality..."
Their declaration states that because "significant adverse changes in the global climate are now inevitable and are already taking place," the COP15 outcome document must include, "an ambitious agreement on adaptation finance which should prioritise the needs of the most vulnerable countries, especially in the near-term..."
The vulnerable countries are asking developed countries "to provide public money amounting to at least 1.5 percent of their gross domestic product, in addition to innovative sources of finance, annually by 2015 to assist developing countries make their transition to a climate resilient low-carbon economy."
"This grant-based finance must be predictable, sustainable, transparent, new and additional – on top of developed country commitments to deliver 0.7 percent of their Gross National Income as Overseas Development Assistance," the declaration states.
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