Maldives: Help from Outer Space
11. Juni 2009 | Von atsil2 | Kategorie:English TOWeNew York Times correspondent Nicholas Schmidle remembers:
Twenty-two years ago, president Mohamed Nasheed’s predecessor traveled to New York with a mission. Maumoon Abdul Gayoom, then only 9 years into his 30-year reign, stood before the United Nations and warned the world that rising sea levels would eventually erase his country from the map: “With a mere one-meter rise,” he said, “a storm surge would be catastrophic and possibly fatal to the nation.”
“We can do nothing to stop climate change on our own, and so we have to buy land elsewhere,” Nasheed said in November.
from: Wanted: A New Home for My Country by Nicholas Schmdle (New York Times)
In March 2009 Nasheed proclaimed his country’s decision to become the world’s first carbon-neutral country within a decade.
On COP15 COPENHAGEN, the website of the United Nations Climate Change Conference December 7 – December 18 2009, you can read today:
Satellite imagery can help island states plan for environmental disaster and climate change. The UN Office for Outer Space Affairs meets this week to discuss how poor nations like the Maldives can get the photos from space.
from: Island state wants help from outer space
Bluepeace, a young and evolving organization, strictly non-governmental, made a different proposal how to save the population of the Maldive archipelago:
New Homeland Elsewhere is Not the Only Solution for Climate Victims of the Maldives
The videos below give you a pictoral impression of impacts the global climate change could have on the Maldivian Islands:
Related post: Thomas L. Friedman: The inflection is near?
