Islands First

The Republic of Maldives, an island nation consisting of a group of atolls in the Indian Ocean, will be partially submerged by the end of the century. This speculation is based on the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) estimate that sea levels to rise between 18-59 centimeters by 2100. Since 80 percent of the Maldives' 1,200 islands are about 1 meter above sea level, they will be the first in the region to be submerged.

For the leaders of island countries, global warming/climate change is not a new issue. It has been two decades since October of 1987, the day that Maldives President Maumoon Abdul Gayoom called for urgent action on climate change in his address to the United Nations. In speaking to the General Assembly, he claimed that his countries, more specifically the low-lying islands, are threatened by rising sea level. In his words, his country of 311,000 people was "an endangered nation."30 With most of its 1,196 tiny islands barely 2 meters above sea level, the Maldives' survival would be in jeopardy with even a 1-meter rise in sea level in the event of a storm surge. More recently, Maumoon Abdul Gayoom said 80 of his country's 1,200 islands had experienced tidal surges in the last few years. "Never in our documented history have so many islands been affected to such an extent. These surges were a grim reminder of the devastating tsunami of 2004 and a clear warning of future disasters," Gayoom said at a recent conference on development and climate change in Lisbon.