Global awareness on climate change has increased over the years, President Mohamed Nasheed has said. The President made the statement before the inauguration of the Earth Hour celebrations in the Maldives.
The Earth Hour celebration began with the switching off the lights of the Muleeaage by President Nasheed at 8.30pm, last night.
In his speech, President Nasheed highlighted the negative impacts of climatic change on the Maldives. He also said that the celebration of Earth Hour symbolize that each one of us, working together, can make a positive impact on climate change. Further, he said, the celebration was also an effort to actively participate in the efforts to minimize the effect of climate change, pollution and global warming.
Source: haveeru.com.mv
Sunday, March 29, 2009
How to tackle climate change — the Maldives example
The tiny Indian Ocean nation of the Maldives will become carbon-neutral within 10 years. This was the pledge made by Maldives President Mohamed Nasheed on March 15.
The low-lying country will be among the first in the world to be inundated by rising sea levels caused by human-induced climate change. The highest point in the chain of 1200 islands and coral atolls is just 1.8 metres above sea-level.
The latest research indicates that if present rates of carbon emissions continue, global warming will likely cause sea level rises of about one metre by 2100. This is close to double the rise predicted by most scientists just two years ago.
At the request of the Maldives government, a plan for carbon neutrality has been developed for the Republic of Maldives by British climate writers Chris Goodall (author of Ten Technologies to Save the Planet) and Mark Lynas (author of the best-selling book Six Degrees). An outline of Goodall and Lynas’s plan has been posted at
Carbon neutrality
The plan focuses on the replacement of fossil fuels with renewable energy for electricity, most land and sea transport, and household cooking by 2020.
About 160 wind turbines will provide the bulk of electricity for the inhabited islands. Wind power will be supplemented with solar power farms built in shallow island lagoons. These two power sources are expected to generate considerably more electricity than the Maldives currently consumes.
To account for the variability of wind and solar power, Goodall and Lynas suggest the country invests in a biomass combustion plant, mainly using coconut husks, for backup energy needs in the capital Male. Outside the capital, backup energy supply can be secured by storing energy in lithium phosphate batteries, they say. Currently, diesel-powered generators are a major source of energy on most of the islands.
About US$100 million will be needed to rework the electricity transmission network to make the most of renewable supply and to improve energy efficiency.
Under the plan, diesel fuel used in larger boats can be switched with power from renewable electricity. Petrol used to power cars and smaller boats can be sharply reduced via the steady replacement of the combustion engine with electric battery-powered vehicles. In the long run, electricity will be a far cheaper option than petrol for land and sea transport, Goodall and Lynas say.
Wood and kerosene are used by most people in the Maldives for cooking fuel. Goodall and Lynas suggest the introduction of “highly efficient closed stoves” for remote islands. For homes and tourist resorts with access to the grid, the replacement of older stoves with electric-powered alternatives will be needed. Solar cookers are another option for household use.
The release of methane gas from organic waste is responsible for a estimated 20% of the nation’s total emissions. This can be mostly eliminated through organic composting techniques. The compost can be used to improve the Maldives’s poor soil fertility and increase local crop yields.
Outside of their small fishing industry, the Maldives economy is almost completely dependent on foreign tourism. After electricity, the next most important source of carbon emissions is from aviation.
Goodall and Lynas propose that the Maldives could offset aviation emissions by buying, and then cancelling, emissions permits from the European Union carbon trading scheme.
This is the most questionable part of the ambitious plan. The EU’s carbon trading scheme is widely discredited for failing to reduce emission while allowing speculators to make windfall profits from buying and selling the “right to pollute”.
Action from industrialised countries in sharply cutting emissions is the only real “offset” the Maldives can rely on.
A larger problem is that the entire plan will cost at least $1.1 billion over a decade — far more than the Maldives can afford.
The plan would only be possible if the country were to receive loans from international financial institutions such as the International Monetary Fund or the World Bank — bodies notorious for impoverishing, rather than helping, countries in the global South.
Despite the cost of setting up renewable energy infrastructure, Goodall and Lynas predict the switch to renewables would save the Maldives money in the long term. Cutting the country’s dependence on oil would reduce the nation’s energy bill by $50 to $130 million every year.
No excuse for inaction
The announcement from the Maldives government came just days after the International Scientific Congress on Climate Change had met in Copenhagen in early March. The key findings of the conference were summarised in a blunt press statement on March 12.
Climate change is much worse than we thought, the scientists concluded. The “worst-case” scenarios outlined in the 2007 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report are being reached, or even surpassed, right now.
“For many key parameters, the climate system is already moving beyond the patterns of natural variability within which our society and economy have developed and thrived. … There is a significant risk that many of the trends will accelerate, leading to an increasing risk of abrupt or irreversible climatic shifts”, the statement said.
“Rapid, sustained, and effective mitigation based on coordinated global and regional action is required to avoid ‘dangerous climate change’ … There is no excuse for inaction.”
The conference gave further scientific backing to what growing numbers of people already fear. The planet is perilously close to passing climate tipping points which, if crossed, will provoke runaway global warming and threaten billions of lives.
The Arctic ice cap — one of the Earth’s natural “air-conditioners” — is melting. The oceans are warming, turning the planet’s greatest carbon-sink into a carbon emitter. The Siberian permafrost is retreating, releasing mega-tonnes of trapped methane, a greenhouse gas 20 times more powerful that carbon dioxide, up into the atmosphere.
The world’s glaciers — irreplaceable sources of fresh water for billions of people — are shrinking rapidly. The huge ice caps of Greenland and Antarctica are becoming fragile; their melting would herald further rises in sea levels and turn millions of people into climate refugees. Weather systems are changing in unpredictable ways; extreme weather events are on the rise.
Urgent, international action to end the burning of fossil fuels for energy is required now to avert the climate change threat. Despite this, wealthy polluting nations such as Australia continue to make excuses for inaction.
‘The choice is that stark’
On March 17, Nasheed outlined the reasoning behind the Maldives’s ambitious plan for carbon-neutrality in a video address streamed to the British launch of the forthcoming feature film about climate change by director Franny Armstrong, The Age of Stupid.
“If we can achieve this — a small, relatively poor country — there can be no excuse from the rich, industrial nations who claim that going green is too complex, too expensive or too much bother”, Nasheed said.
“Now the world has an opportunity to come together and prevent the looming environmental catastrophe. That opportunity is called Copenhagen.
“And let’s be very frank about this: Copenhagen can be one of two things.
“It can be an historic event where the world unites against carbon pollution, in a collective spirit of co-operation and collaboration.
“Or, Copenhagen can be a suicide pact.
“The choice is that stark.
“My message to you, my message to the world, is simply this: please, don’t be stupid.”
If the Copenhagen conference in December fails to set emissions cuts that can restore a safe climate, then the fault will lie with the governments of the developed world, who are desperately resisting change.
At the last international conference on climate change, held in the Polish city of Poznan late last year, the Australian government helped to sabotage a binding international agreement.
The Australian delegation chaired a bloc of some of the world’s biggest polluters, including the US, Japan, Saudi Arabia and Canada. The bloc was dedicated to stopping agreement on a proposed 25%-40% emissions reduction by 2020.
Unfortunately, they were successful.
The Rudd government’s push to legislate sickeningly low emissions cuts of 5%-15% by 2020 is designed to undermine the Copenhagen conference and stop it from adopting the serious cuts urged by the Maldives and other countries in the global South.
This reflects the reality of climate policy in Australia: the biggest, wealthiest polluters call the shots. The Rudd government defends them, while pretending to be serious about climate change.
Both the government and the powerful fossil fuel interests must be confronted, and their agenda defeated, if we hope to secure a safe climate.
Source: www.greenleft.org.au
The latest research indicates that if present rates of carbon emissions continue, global warming will likely cause sea level rises of about one metre by 2100. This is close to double the rise predicted by most scientists just two years ago.
At the request of the Maldives government, a plan for carbon neutrality has been developed for the Republic of Maldives by British climate writers Chris Goodall (author of Ten Technologies to Save the Planet) and Mark Lynas (author of the best-selling book Six Degrees). An outline of Goodall and Lynas’s plan has been posted at
Carbon neutrality
The plan focuses on the replacement of fossil fuels with renewable energy for electricity, most land and sea transport, and household cooking by 2020.
About 160 wind turbines will provide the bulk of electricity for the inhabited islands. Wind power will be supplemented with solar power farms built in shallow island lagoons. These two power sources are expected to generate considerably more electricity than the Maldives currently consumes.
To account for the variability of wind and solar power, Goodall and Lynas suggest the country invests in a biomass combustion plant, mainly using coconut husks, for backup energy needs in the capital Male. Outside the capital, backup energy supply can be secured by storing energy in lithium phosphate batteries, they say. Currently, diesel-powered generators are a major source of energy on most of the islands.
About US$100 million will be needed to rework the electricity transmission network to make the most of renewable supply and to improve energy efficiency.
Under the plan, diesel fuel used in larger boats can be switched with power from renewable electricity. Petrol used to power cars and smaller boats can be sharply reduced via the steady replacement of the combustion engine with electric battery-powered vehicles. In the long run, electricity will be a far cheaper option than petrol for land and sea transport, Goodall and Lynas say.
Wood and kerosene are used by most people in the Maldives for cooking fuel. Goodall and Lynas suggest the introduction of “highly efficient closed stoves” for remote islands. For homes and tourist resorts with access to the grid, the replacement of older stoves with electric-powered alternatives will be needed. Solar cookers are another option for household use.
The release of methane gas from organic waste is responsible for a estimated 20% of the nation’s total emissions. This can be mostly eliminated through organic composting techniques. The compost can be used to improve the Maldives’s poor soil fertility and increase local crop yields.
Outside of their small fishing industry, the Maldives economy is almost completely dependent on foreign tourism. After electricity, the next most important source of carbon emissions is from aviation.
Goodall and Lynas propose that the Maldives could offset aviation emissions by buying, and then cancelling, emissions permits from the European Union carbon trading scheme.
This is the most questionable part of the ambitious plan. The EU’s carbon trading scheme is widely discredited for failing to reduce emission while allowing speculators to make windfall profits from buying and selling the “right to pollute”.
Action from industrialised countries in sharply cutting emissions is the only real “offset” the Maldives can rely on.
A larger problem is that the entire plan will cost at least $1.1 billion over a decade — far more than the Maldives can afford.
The plan would only be possible if the country were to receive loans from international financial institutions such as the International Monetary Fund or the World Bank — bodies notorious for impoverishing, rather than helping, countries in the global South.
Despite the cost of setting up renewable energy infrastructure, Goodall and Lynas predict the switch to renewables would save the Maldives money in the long term. Cutting the country’s dependence on oil would reduce the nation’s energy bill by $50 to $130 million every year.
No excuse for inaction
The announcement from the Maldives government came just days after the International Scientific Congress on Climate Change had met in Copenhagen in early March. The key findings of the conference were summarised in a blunt press statement on March 12.
Climate change is much worse than we thought, the scientists concluded. The “worst-case” scenarios outlined in the 2007 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report are being reached, or even surpassed, right now.
“For many key parameters, the climate system is already moving beyond the patterns of natural variability within which our society and economy have developed and thrived. … There is a significant risk that many of the trends will accelerate, leading to an increasing risk of abrupt or irreversible climatic shifts”, the statement said.
“Rapid, sustained, and effective mitigation based on coordinated global and regional action is required to avoid ‘dangerous climate change’ … There is no excuse for inaction.”
The conference gave further scientific backing to what growing numbers of people already fear. The planet is perilously close to passing climate tipping points which, if crossed, will provoke runaway global warming and threaten billions of lives.
The Arctic ice cap — one of the Earth’s natural “air-conditioners” — is melting. The oceans are warming, turning the planet’s greatest carbon-sink into a carbon emitter. The Siberian permafrost is retreating, releasing mega-tonnes of trapped methane, a greenhouse gas 20 times more powerful that carbon dioxide, up into the atmosphere.
The world’s glaciers — irreplaceable sources of fresh water for billions of people — are shrinking rapidly. The huge ice caps of Greenland and Antarctica are becoming fragile; their melting would herald further rises in sea levels and turn millions of people into climate refugees. Weather systems are changing in unpredictable ways; extreme weather events are on the rise.
Urgent, international action to end the burning of fossil fuels for energy is required now to avert the climate change threat. Despite this, wealthy polluting nations such as Australia continue to make excuses for inaction.
‘The choice is that stark’
On March 17, Nasheed outlined the reasoning behind the Maldives’s ambitious plan for carbon-neutrality in a video address streamed to the British launch of the forthcoming feature film about climate change by director Franny Armstrong, The Age of Stupid.
“If we can achieve this — a small, relatively poor country — there can be no excuse from the rich, industrial nations who claim that going green is too complex, too expensive or too much bother”, Nasheed said.
“Now the world has an opportunity to come together and prevent the looming environmental catastrophe. That opportunity is called Copenhagen.
“And let’s be very frank about this: Copenhagen can be one of two things.
“It can be an historic event where the world unites against carbon pollution, in a collective spirit of co-operation and collaboration.
“Or, Copenhagen can be a suicide pact.
“The choice is that stark.
“My message to you, my message to the world, is simply this: please, don’t be stupid.”
If the Copenhagen conference in December fails to set emissions cuts that can restore a safe climate, then the fault will lie with the governments of the developed world, who are desperately resisting change.
At the last international conference on climate change, held in the Polish city of Poznan late last year, the Australian government helped to sabotage a binding international agreement.
The Australian delegation chaired a bloc of some of the world’s biggest polluters, including the US, Japan, Saudi Arabia and Canada. The bloc was dedicated to stopping agreement on a proposed 25%-40% emissions reduction by 2020.
Unfortunately, they were successful.
The Rudd government’s push to legislate sickeningly low emissions cuts of 5%-15% by 2020 is designed to undermine the Copenhagen conference and stop it from adopting the serious cuts urged by the Maldives and other countries in the global South.
This reflects the reality of climate policy in Australia: the biggest, wealthiest polluters call the shots. The Rudd government defends them, while pretending to be serious about climate change.
Both the government and the powerful fossil fuel interests must be confronted, and their agenda defeated, if we hope to secure a safe climate.
Saturday, March 28, 2009
Rise of sea levels is 'the greatest lie ever told'
If one thing more than any other is used to justify proposals that the world must spend tens of trillions of dollars on combating global warming, it is the belief that we face a disastrous rise in sea levels. The Antarctic and Greenland ice caps will melt, we are told, warming oceans will expand, and the result will be catastrophe.
Although the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) only predicts a sea level rise of 59cm (17 inches) by 2100, Al Gore in his Oscar-winning film An Inconvenient Truth went much further, talking of 20 feet, and showing computer graphics of cities such as Shanghai and San Francisco half under water. We all know the graphic showing central London in similar plight. As for tiny island nations such as the Maldives and Tuvalu, as Prince Charles likes to tell us and the Archbishop of Canterbury was again parroting last week, they are due to vanish. [Read More]
Wednesday, March 25, 2009
Saarc Summit likely to be deferred
The 16th Saarc Summit is likely to be deferred until at least the first quarter of 2010 as the host the Maldives expressed its inability to arrange the gathering before October 2009 amid the current economic recession.
The summit of the eight-nation South Asian Association of Regional Cooperation (Saarc) grouping was scheduled to be held in the island nation in September this year as decided at the 15th Saarc Summit in Sri Lanka in 2008.
Diplomatic sources said the Maldives Foreign Minister Ahmed Shaheed at a meeting of Saarc Council of Ministers in Colombo recently expressed its incapability to arrange the summit as the country is seriously affected by the economic meltdown.
The meeting requested the Maldives to set up a new schedule before October. But the Minister said the Maldives, dependent on tourism industry, would not be able to hold the summit after October, as it is the peak season for tourists of the island nation.
It may be mentioned that the Maldives earlier expressed its inability to arrange the 15th SAARC Summit in 2008 because of its general elections and Sri Lanka then came forward to host the summit which coincided with the 60 years of its independence.
Sources said it is still unsettled who would host the next summit as the Maldives yet to decline to host the gathering. It offered to host it in the first quarter of next year.
However, Bhutan, which never hosted the Saarc summit since its birth, for the first time has officially proposed to arrange the summit in spring (MarchApril) 2010.
Diplomatic sources said Bhutan on March 13 contacted the Saarc Secretariat in Kathmandu saying it would host the 16th summit in the spring of 2010.
Meanwhile, the visiting Saarc Secretary General Sheel Kant Sharma yesterday informed Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina that the summit is likely to be held in Nepal, according to the Prime Minister's Press Secretary Abul Kalam Azad.
On Bhutan's eagerness to host the 16th summit, official sources here said countries host the summit in alphabetic order.
Before giving the final nod to Bhutan, the Saarc Secretariat must consult with other member countries, including Nepal, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Bangladesh and the Maldives as it is yet to decline to host the gathering, said a source.
There is no way Bhutan can host the summit at this stage because it will have to wait till Nepal, Afghanistan and Bangladesh host the summit.
Source: thedailystar.net
The summit of the eight-nation South Asian Association of Regional Cooperation (Saarc) grouping was scheduled to be held in the island nation in September this year as decided at the 15th Saarc Summit in Sri Lanka in 2008.
Diplomatic sources said the Maldives Foreign Minister Ahmed Shaheed at a meeting of Saarc Council of Ministers in Colombo recently expressed its incapability to arrange the summit as the country is seriously affected by the economic meltdown.
The meeting requested the Maldives to set up a new schedule before October. But the Minister said the Maldives, dependent on tourism industry, would not be able to hold the summit after October, as it is the peak season for tourists of the island nation.
It may be mentioned that the Maldives earlier expressed its inability to arrange the 15th SAARC Summit in 2008 because of its general elections and Sri Lanka then came forward to host the summit which coincided with the 60 years of its independence.
Sources said it is still unsettled who would host the next summit as the Maldives yet to decline to host the gathering. It offered to host it in the first quarter of next year.
However, Bhutan, which never hosted the Saarc summit since its birth, for the first time has officially proposed to arrange the summit in spring (MarchApril) 2010.
Diplomatic sources said Bhutan on March 13 contacted the Saarc Secretariat in Kathmandu saying it would host the 16th summit in the spring of 2010.
Meanwhile, the visiting Saarc Secretary General Sheel Kant Sharma yesterday informed Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina that the summit is likely to be held in Nepal, according to the Prime Minister's Press Secretary Abul Kalam Azad.
On Bhutan's eagerness to host the 16th summit, official sources here said countries host the summit in alphabetic order.
Before giving the final nod to Bhutan, the Saarc Secretariat must consult with other member countries, including Nepal, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Bangladesh and the Maldives as it is yet to decline to host the gathering, said a source.
There is no way Bhutan can host the summit at this stage because it will have to wait till Nepal, Afghanistan and Bangladesh host the summit.
Source: thedailystar.net
Monday, March 23, 2009
Wisdom of the small
A tiny country is planning to go carbon-neutral
ON MARCH 15th the president of the Maldives, Mohamed Nasheed, announced that his country would try to stop using fossil fuels—and thus eliminate most of its greenhouse-gas emissions—by 2020. The Maldives is not wealthy but it leads richer nations in tackling climate change.
Mr Nasheed has good reason to be so conscientious. The Maldives, a collection of atolls in the middle of the Indian Ocean, stands less than two metres above sea level. That means it will probably be the first country to disappear as sea levels continue to rise—and, in the meantime, growing storm surges will make life there parlous.
Yet the Maldives’ contribution to climate change is minimal. Fewer than 400,000 people live there and most of those own neither a car nor many electrical appliances. Even the carbon emissions generated by newlyweds flying in for their honeymoons—the mainstay of the economy—are negligible compared with what those holiday-makers generate at home.
Mr Nasheed has recruited two British environmentalists, Mark Lynas and Chris Goodall, to draft a plan for the Maldives to replace the oil that fuels the country’s generators, cars and boats with power from solar panels, wind turbines and biofuels. This, they reckon, will cost $1.1 billion. It will, however, spare the place the expense of importing petrol, diesel and kerosene, and so pay for itself in 10 to 20 years, depending on the price of oil.
Mr Nasheed says mildly that he hopes other countries will follow the Maldives’ example. He is too gracious to add that rich countries, which bear the lion’s share of responsibility for climate change, should be ashamed that his, which bears almost none, is doing relatively more to fight it than they are. European politicians like to congratulate themselves for setting the goal of generating a mere 20% of power from renewable sources by 2020. Many of their American counterparts, meanwhile, are arguing against even that modest target, on the grounds that their states cannot afford it. Income per head in Mississippi, one of the places protesting most loudly, is seven times that of the Maldives.
Perhaps a few politicians in the rich world will focus on this injustice. But a more important point is that overhauling the Maldives’ energy supply within a decade does not look impossible. The islands are famously sunny and also (though this is less widely advertised) quite windy, so there is plenty of raw material. And the falling price of wind turbines and solar panels makes turning that energy into electricity more affordable than it used to be—a trend that is likely to continue. Of course, the wind does not always blow and even the sunniest tropical paradise goes dark at night. But Messrs Lynas and Goodall reckon $315m-worth of batteries combined with a biomass-fuelled power plant should be enough to keep the lights on during windless hours of darkness.
In many ways, therefore, the archipelago is well suited to an energy makeover. But it is worse off in some others. The population is scattered across a chain of islands 900km long, which makes it expensive to connect everyone to a power source. It is also a bad time to be raising money for such a project. But even if rich countries do not have the decency to help pay for Mr Nasheed’s plan, they should, at least, shamelessly plagiarise it.
Source: www.economist.com
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