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Environment

Maldives Preparing for Global Warming Apocalypse

January 28, 2008 at 12:08 PM | 0 Comments

Seawalls on the seashore...

As far back as 1992, the president of the Maldives, Maumoon Abdul Gayoom, warned that his nation could end up under the ocean by the year 2100. After the Boxing Day tsunami of 2004, the entire archipelago was underwater for minutes. And the Kyoto Protocol has done about, well, nothing to keep the Indian Ocean at bay.

So the Maldives built huge seawalls--at the expense of the islands' natural beauty. (Not high on our attractive natural wonders scale: concrete blocks.) As for beaches, the new strategy is to build artificial islands, like Hulhumale, where white sand is the norm and engineering staves off submersion.

Still, forging artificial atolls isn't cheap. Unless the Maldives can convince industrialized nations--which create most of the world's greenhouse gasses--to chip in some cash, the future of the island nation remains in doubt.

Related Stories:
· Maldives Builds Barriers to Global Warming [NPR]
· Air Taxis Trump Land Taxis in the Maldives [Jaunted]
· The Maldives: Destination of the Year 2006 [Jaunted]
· Tuvalu Slowly Sinking Under The Sea [Jaunted]