Maldives Underwater Cabinet Meeting
2009-10-17 13:54
Arriving for a cabinet meeting, a member of the Maldives government takes an unorthodox journey to work.
He and fellow cabinet members were holding the world's first underwater cabinet meeting in the shallow seas surrounding the Maldives Islands.
They conducted the meeting using hand signals and slates.
And while holding meetings in full scuba diving gear could seem quite a fun idea - the thinking behind this meeting is deadly serious.
The Maldives is one of the most vulnerable places on earth to rising sea levels.
Its politicians - seen here signing an SOS message at their underwater desks - want the rest of the world to know just how precarious their and other low lying countries' situations are.
Global warming could increase sea levels and submerge the chain of islands and people here are desperate for the world to get a grip on rising carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere.
The idea was the brain child of their President Mohamed Nasheed who is sending the SOS message to be presented at the U.S. climate change summit in Copenhagen.
[Mohamed Nasheed, Maldives President]:
"We are actually trying to send out a message. Let the world know what is happening. And what might, what will happen to the Maldives if climate change is not checked. This is a challenging situation. And we want to see that everyone else is also occupied as much as we are. And would like to see that people actually do something about it."
And he said it wasn't just the Maldives that the world needed to worry about.
[Mohamed Nasheed, Maldives President]:
"If Maldives can't be saved today, we do not feel that there is much of a chance for the rest of the world."
Rising sea levels of up to 58 centimetres as predicted by the U.N. Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change, threatens to submerge most of the Maldives low lying islands by 2100.
