President Mohamed Nasheed of the Maldives
In 1990, I was probably among the first journalists to write about a serious existential threat to the tiny Indian Ocean island nation of the Maldives. Twenty two years later the threat of the Maldives being submerged by rising sea level remains undiminished but the awareness about it has increased manifold.
The rising sea level is a direct consequence of the climate change, leading to global warming and polar ice melting. Even in 1990, when I visited the Maldives as part of the media team accompanying the late Prime Minister V.P. Singh, the few who understood the problem were very vocal in talking about it.
Documentary filmmaker John Shenk has made what seems like a compelling documentary on the very subject and used the island nation’s charismatic President Mohamed Nasheed as the protagonist to tell the story. Nasheed has understandably made saving his country from being gobbled up by the ocean his signature political issue. The documentary ‘The Island President’ tells that story.
Nasheed rose as a political opponent against the three-decade-long rule of Maumoon Abdul Gayoom, who took over as president in 1978 and continued until 2008. Nasheed was arrested 12 times and tortured twice during his political opposition days. He spent 18 months in solitary. The 45-year-old Nasheed was elected president in October, 2008. Since then he has made the survival of his country in the face of the consequences of the climate change caused by the rest of the world his defining mission.
It is hardly surprising that Shenk saw great drama for a documentary in the story. I look forward its release in March this year.
The Maldives is a collection of 1200 atolls, of which 80 percent barely manage to rise three to five feet above the sea level. That low elevation makes it the world's lowest nation. I remember one senior government official, who was surprised that I was interested in this story at all, took me to a spot and said, "Now you are standing on the highest spot on the Maldives." It was six feet above the sea level.
Nasheed made news in 2009 when he began shopping for an alternative homeland for his country's 330,000 people. He has considered both the neighbors India and Sri Lanka as possible countries where the Maldivians can be relocated once the atolls become uninhabitable.
