BBC News 15 Mar 09;
The Maldives will become carbon-neutral within a decade by switching completely to renewable energy sources like wind and solar power, its leader has said.
President Mohamed Nasheed told the BBC the Maldives understood better than most what would happen if the world failed to tackle climate change.
His tiny country is one of the lowest-lying on Earth and so is extremely vulnerable to rises in sea level. He said he hoped his plan would serve as a blueprint for other nations.
Mr Nasheed was due to announce the plan formally after the screening of a new film on climate change, The Age of Stupid, on Sunday.
The Maldives is made up of a chain of nearly 1,200 islands, most of them uninhabited, which lie off the Indian sub-continent.
None of the coral islands measures more than 1.8 metres (six feet) above sea level, making the country vulnerable to a rise in sea levels associated with global warming.
'Starting from scratch'
"We understand more than perhaps anyone what would happen to us if we didn't do anything about it or if the rest of the world doesn't find the imagination to confront this problem," Mr Nasheed told Newshour, speaking by telephone from the capital, Male.
"So basically, we don't want to sit around and blame others, but we want to do whatever we can, and hopefully, if we can become carbon-neutral, and when we come up with the plan, we hope that these plans also will serve as a blueprint for other nations to follow.
"We think we can do it, we feel that everyone should be engaged in it, and we don't think that this is an issue that should be taken lightly."
It is estimated that the Maldives, which has high levels of poverty, will need to spend about $110m a year to make the transition to renewable energy sources.
Asked how it could afford this, the president said the country was already spending similar sums on existing energy sources, and he expected to recover the extra cost within the decade.
"We start almost from scratch, we are having to go for new investments in almost all areas and it is quite pointless for us to go to yesterday's technologies," he said.
The Age of Stupid stars British actor Pete Postlethwaite as an old man living in a devastated future Earth, watching archive film of the planet and asking why more was not done to combat climate change.
The film's producer, Franny Armstrong, told the BBC the Maldives had set a good example to the developed world.
"I think the challenge has now been laid down by the Maldives, a very poor undeveloped country," she said.
"So now it's over to us, to the rich countries."
An international climate change conference is due to be held in Copenhagen in December to debate initiatives for when the Kyoto Protocol expires in 2012.
UN chief Ban Ki-moon recently urged the world to strike a "conclusive carbon emissions reduction" deal at the conference.
Maldives vows to be first carbon-neutral nation
Olivia Lang, Reuters 15 Mar 09;
MALE (Reuters) - The Maldives will shift entirely to renewable energy over the next decade to become the first carbon-neutral nation and fight climate change that threatens the low-lying archipelago's existence, the president said on Sunday.
President Mohamed Nasheed said the Indian Ocean islands would swap fossil fuels for wind and solar power, and buy and destroy EU carbon credits to offset emissions from tourists flying to visit its luxury vacation resorts.
"Climate change threatens us all. Countries need to pull together to de-carbonize the world economy," Nasheed said in a statement. "We know cutting greenhouse gas emissions is possible and the Maldives is willing to play its part."
The $1.1 billion plan would require 155 wind turbines supplying 1.5 megawatts each and a half a square kilometer of solar panels to meet the needs of the islands' 385,000 people.
"We aim to become carbon-neutral in a decade," he said.
The state-owned electricity monopoly will be privatized, and investors and donors invited to take part in the plan.
The program envisions installing battery backup in case wind and solar sources are inadequate, and a power plant to be run off coconut husks in the capital, Male.
The Maldives' economy, based almost entirely on fishing and tourism, is worth about $800 million a year, so it will need outside help.
Nasheed last year unseated Asia's longest-serving ruler, 30-year incumbent President Maumoon Abdul Gayoom, in the islands' first multiparty presidential election. Gayoom has become a vocal advocate for mitigating climate change.
Nasheed drew global attention shortly after his election when he said the Maldives would start looking to buy land in other countries to resettle people once the seas rose, but later acknowledged the plan was not feasible financially.
The new plan could pay for itself in 10 years because of the savings on oil imports, said Mark Lynas, an environmentalist and author of three books on climate change who worked with the Maldivian government on the plan.
"It's going to cost a lot of money but it will also save a lot of money from not having to import oil," he said.
The Maldives imports diesel and fuel oil to power its 200 inhabited islands.
"The point of doing it is that it is something the Maldives can lead the world in," Lynas told Reuters. "No rich country has the excuse that it is too expensive and we can't do anything."
In 2007, a U.N. climate change panel predicted an increase in sea levels of 58cm, which would submerge many of the Maldives' 1,192 islands by 2100.
(Writing by Bryson Hull; Editing by Janet Lawrence)
Maldives leader vows to make country carbon neutral
Yahoo News 14 Mar 09;
LONDON (AFP) – The Maldives will become the world's first carbon neutral country by fully switching to the use of renewable energy within a decade, President Mohamed Nasheed said in an article to be published Sunday.
Writing in Britain's Observer weekly newspaper, Nasheed said the country would rely on solar panels and wind turbines instead of oil, adding that "the Maldives will no longer be a net contributor to greenhouse gas emissions."
Nasheed's remarks come just less than a week after scientists meeting in Copenhagen earlier this week warned the impact of global warming was accelerating beyond a forecast made by UN experts two years ago.
"For the Maldives, a nation of tropical coral islands just 1.5 metres (five feet) above the sea, these warnings come with added bite," the Indian Ocean atoll nation's leader wrote.
"Climate change isn't a vague and abstract danger but a real threat to our survival. But climate change not only threatens the Maldives, it threatens us all."
He added: "In a grotesque Faustian pact, we have done a deal with the carbon devil: for untold fossil fuel consumption in our lifetime, we are trading our children's place in an earthly paradise.
"Today, the Maldives will opt out of that pact."
Nasheed noted that "making the radical shift to carbon neutrality won't be easy. But where there is a will, there is a way."
"People often tell me caring for the environment is too difficult, too expensive or too much bother. I admit installing solar panels and wind turbines doesn't come cheap.
"But when I read those science reports from Copenhagen, I know there is only one choice. Going green might cost a lot but refusing to act now will cost us the Earth."
In March 2007, the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) concluded that global warming, if unchecked, would lead to a devastating amalgam of floods, drought, disease and extreme weather by the century end.
Maldives president vows carbon neutral nation
Associated Press 15 Mar 09;
LONDON (AP) — The president of the Maldives says the Indian Ocean nation will become the world's first carbon-neutral country within a decade.
Writing in Sunday's edition of Britain's Observer newspaper, President Mohamed Nasheed said his country of low-lying tropical islands faced "a real threat to our survival" from rising sea levels produced by global warming.
Climate researchers say that many of the Maldives' 1,200 islands could disappear if the seas continue to rise. Much of the archipelago is only 5 feet (1.5 meters) above sea level.
Scientists meeting in Copenhagen, Denmark last week warned that climate change was accelerating faster than predicted. They said melting glaciers and ice sheets could help push the sea level up by as much as 39 inches (1 meter) by the end of the century.
Nasheed said his country would renounce oil and get all its energy from renewable sources such as wind and solar power.
"Going green might cost a lot but refusing to act now will cost us the Earth," he wrote.
Nasheed accused politicians around the world of failing to act and striking "a grotesque Faustian pact" by sacrificing the environment's future for fossil-fuel consumption today.
"Today, the Maldives will opt out of that pact," Nasheed wrote.
He said the Maldives would officially announce its plan later Sunday at the premiere of the environment-themed British film "The Age of Stupid."
The screening, in a tent in London's Leicester Square, is being billed as the world's first solar-powered film premiere.
