Maldives Islanders Save For New Home
November 16th, 2008MALDIVES ISLANDS, INDIAN OCEAN, November 10, 2008: The president-elect of the Maldives, a nation of 1,200 low islands in the Indian Ocean, is planning to establish an investment fund with some of its earnings from tourism so it can buy a haven for its citizens should global warming raise sea levels at a dangerous pace, according to several news reports. And Mohamed Nasheed, the country’s first democratically elected president, named Sri Lanka and India as possible spots for a refuge, according to the BBC.
Of the 350,000 Maldivians, 10,000 are recent immigrants from India. It would be the reversal of a migration that happened thousands of years ago when dravidians from the subcontinent first colonized the archipelago. The national language, Dhivehi, is originated from Sanskrit.
Ibrahim Zaki, a spokesmen for the government, said, “Global warming and environmental issues are issues of major concern to the Maldivian people. We are just about three feet above sea level.”
In its latest report, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change of the United Nations projected that sea levels worldwide could rise up to two feet by 2100 as ice sheets eroded and warming seawater expanded. But the panel and independent climate specialists said even higher levels were possible and centuries of rising seas could follow if warming persisted.
