Maldives president Mohammed Nasheed demands action on climate change

Mark Henderson in the Times (UK): Global warming should be seen not as an environmental crisis but as a human rights issue that risks the lives, livelihoods and homes of millions of people, the President of one of the countries that is most vulnerable to climate change said yesterday.

Mohammed Nasheed, the President of the Maldives, told The Times that defending his island nation against rising sea levels was a humanitarian challenge as critical as defending Poland against Nazi Germany in 1939.

“We feel that climate change is not an environmental issue, it’s a security issue, it’s a human rights issue,” the country’s first democratically elected leader said at the launch of The Times World Forum on Enterprise and the Environment at the University of Oxford. “If you thought that defending Poland was important, defending the Maldives is important. If you can’t save the Maldives today you can’t save yourself tomorrow.”

The Maldives is among the countries most endangered by climate change as none of its 1,190 islands in the Indian Ocean lies more than two metres above sea level. As scientists estimate that sea levels will rise globally by between 20cm and 60cm by 2100, many islands face complete inundation and even the more elevated ones will experience increased flooding….