The wind farm plans were announced earlier this week. The project will include 30 turbines and is expected to provide the nation with 75 MW of power, powering the capital city, their international airport, and more!

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In a recent international conference on ‘Climate Change: Technology Development & Transfer’ held in Delhi, the Prime Minister of India Dr. Manmohan Singh began his speech by stating that climate friendly and environmentally sound technologies should be viewed as global public goods.

The panel, also chaired by the Maldives President after his country’s recent underwater stunt, called for the Northern countries to do (much) more than just emissions reduction. The statement also comes shortly after media reports suggest India could change its national position on climate change to drop the ‘deal-breaker’ tag put on it by the West.

The BIG question: Will India change its official position ahead of Copenhagen?

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Chaired by President M. Nasheed, the Government of Maldives recently concluded the world’s first ever underwater cabinet meeting. The small island nation of Maldives will perhaps be the first country to go under water, if predictions based on climate change models come true.

The underwater meeting was called to raise this concern and put pressure on the West to act NOW, and for a fair deal at COP in Copenhagen this December. A day after the event, extensively covered by the media (View on: CNN | BBC), the Government of India has announced the setting up of a National institute for long-term research on climate change.

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Maldives President Mohamed Nasheed has told his cabinet members to get ready for an underwater cabinet meeting later this month.

Maldives is a collection of islands and atolls in the Indian Ocean that is less than 2 meters above sea level. Therefore, it is the first country expected to go underwater due to climate change.

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A remarkable dragonfly migration stretching between 14,000 and 18,000 kilometers has been discovered which spans the Indian Ocean.

The migration is by far the longest known insect migration, dwarfing the 7,000km journey of monarch butterflies. Millions of dragonflies make the epic migration every year, which spans from India to the Maldives, the Seychelles, Mozambique, Uganda and back again.

Perhaps the only thing more amazing than the migration is that it has somehow dodged scientific discovery until now. “This just illustrates how little we still know about the natural world,” said Charles Anderson, discoverer of the mass migration.

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The Age of Stupid has arrived after half a decade in the making.  Franny Armstrong has made a new climate change documentary-drama that stars Pete Postlethwaite as an indie climate change refugee from 2055,  that shares the tragedy of of global warming.

In addition to their screenings, they offer ways to help via their ‘not stupid‘ climate activism effort. They are truly trying to encourage folks to participate in lobbying politicians leading up to the talks in Copenhagen at the end of the year.

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Over 200 people gathered at a government office at 4:30 this morning to demand action to stop the severe erosion on the Maldive island of Maduvvaree. Four to eight coastal homes on the island have already been lost to beach erosion.

“We have promised the islanders that the project for long-term protection will start next year meaning as soon as possible in the new year,” said vice-president Dr Mohamed Waheed.

While Waheed and current president Mohamed Nasheed ran for office promising to address the issue, they now say the current budget leaves no money for action. However, Nasheed has begun saving cash to purchase a new homeland if the country does not survive rising sea levels.

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Global sea level rise is a big problem for many of the world’s nations. With an average height above sea level of 1.5m and a maximum height of 4m the Maldives has a bigger problem than most. In their 2007 report the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change forecast that sea level rise is occurring and is speeding up. They also acknowledge that the amount of change varies from place to place. Some regions are seeing a rise, others a fall.

The governments of all small island nations under threat from these changes have been trying to come up with workable solutions. For example one solution under consideration by the Maldivian government involves building a protective sea wall around a several of islands and moving the entire population to a new protected home. This option has been dismissed however as it was thought to be prohibitively expensive.

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This week at ZapRoot: The Maldives plan to buy a new homeland if global warming sinks their country. Honda unveils the FC Sport at the LA Auto Show. Go green for the holidays with our Holiday Gift Guide Part 1.

On Monday, Nasheed told The Guardian that he would start setting aside some cash to buy a new homeland if he loses his to global warming. The money would come from the country’s tourism industry, which brings in a billion dollars annually, and would go into a sovereign wealth fund, reports Australia’s Age.com.

Australia is on the shortlist of possible real estate. So is India and Sri Lanka because they are like the Maldives culturally.

While out there, this may be the only reasonable idea for the island country that doesn’t have the political backing to have much say in international global warming policy. The other option, according to the old Maldives president, is to build a wall around the island. But apparently that’s more expensive than relocating an entire country.

This is most definitely an adaptation strategy - the Maldives are looking beyond merely stopping carbon emissions. But small countries may not have any choice anymore.

Is it time for drastic action like this? Or will this drastic action put a stop to mitigation techniques because politicians will just look for the easy way out (if moving a homeland can be considered the easy way!)?

Related Posts:

Climate Change and a Slow Death
Rising Seas and Powerful Storms Threaten Global Security

Photo Credit: naxief at Flickr under a Creative Commons License

http://www.earth-policy.org/Updates/2008/Update76.htm

Standing before the United Nations General Assembly in October 1987, Maumoon Abdul Gayoom, President of the Maldives, made an appeal representing “an endangered nation.” That year for the first time, “unusual high waves” in the Indian Ocean inundated a quarter of the urban area on the capital island of Male’, flooded farms, and washed away reclaimed land. Gayoom cited scientific evidence that human activities were releasing greenhouse gases that warm the planet, ultimately raising global sea level as glaciers melt and warmer water expands. The trouble extended beyond small islands; studies showed that rising seas would wreak havoc on the U.S. Gulf Coast, the Netherlands, and the river deltas of Egypt and Bangladesh.

Fast-forward through two decades of swelling seas and more powerful storms and the call has moved from the need to study global warming to the necessity of dramatic action to stabilize climate. With small island nations in peril, these days President Gayoom evokes the vision of a United Nations where “name plates are gone; seats are empty.” He does not speak alone: this fall, some 50 countries, including a number of small island nations along with Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the European Union, are planning to put a resolution before the U.N. General Assembly requesting that the U.N. Security Council address “the threat posed by climate change to international peace and security.” As Ambassador Stuart Beck of Palau has asked, “Would any nation facing an invading army not do the same?”

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