Members of the Maldives cabinet this Saturday 17th October 2009, donned their Scuba diving equipment and held a meeting underwater, staged to highlight the threat of global warming to the lowest-lying nation on earth.
President Mohammed Nasheed and 13 other government officials descended to their conference tables and took their seats at 20 feet (6 meters) below the surface of a lagoon off Girifushi island.
Maldives is an Island nation off the south western tip of India that lies in the Indian Ocean. The meeting was which was held to draw attention to fears that rising sea levels caused by the melting of ice caps could swamp this Indian Ocean nation whose island are barely 7 feet above sea level. The country is taking the threat of global warming very seriously and has plans to become the worlds first carbon-neutral nation.
Maldivian President Mohammed Nasheed signed a document underwater calling on all countries to cut down their carbon dioxide emissions ahead of a major U.N. climate change conference in December in Copenhagen. The cabinet communicated during this session using hand signals and underwater white boards. While President Nasheed is a certified Scuba diver, many of the cabinet members had to take special Scuba diving lessons in the weeks that led up to the meeting, in order to attend.
