From United's Hemisphere Magazine

With sea levels rising, conservationists are working to prevent this trendy tropical getaway from becoming paradise lost.

Less than four decades ago, the Maldives, or Dhivehi Raajje (Dhivehi for "Island Kingdom"), was a sleepy, all-but-untouched chain of 26 pristine coral atolls--natural breakwaters that protect some 1,200 shape-shifting sandy islands from the Indian Ocean--hundreds of miles from anywhere. A conservative Sunni Muslim country, it boasted a fishing fleet of traditional dhonis, graceful, sail-driven wooden boats, without a single motor among them. The only way of contacting the mainland was by ham radio or morse code. Until 1972, when an Italian tour operator was persuaded to take a charter flight 400 miles southwest from Sri Lanka to see the islands' legendary beauty for himself, the area "was the same as it had been since the 17th century," notes Adrian Neville, a photojournalist and the author of Dhivehi Raajje: A Portrait of Maldives.

Today, it's a rather different story.

The tiny country, whose populace once sustained itself fishing for tuna in the rich local waters, now welcomes some 600,000 tourists a year. In 2006, Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes spent their honeymoon yachting among the Maldives' hundreds of uninhabited islands, completely inaccessible to the paparazzi. At Huvafen Fushi, guests are apt to spot Indian steel billionaire Lakshmi Mittal's imposing mega-yacht moored in the distance. Supermodel Kate Moss, tennis star Roger Federer, and actors Demi Moore and Ashton Kutcher have all been guests, lured by the promise of the ultimate jet-set escape.

But while the rarefied resorts of the Maldives are regularly lavished with praise in international travel magazines, last fall the remote country made headlines for a different reason.

Shortly after Mohamed Nasheed, a charismatic 41-year-old, became the Maldives' first democratically elected president, he declared that the country, which rises barely three feet above sea level in most places, would soon disappear beneath the waves. His plan, Nasheed said, was to divert profits from the billion-dollar-a-year tourism industry into a "sovereign wealth fund" with which to purchase a new homeland--possibly in Sri Lanka, India or farther afield, in Australia--for his 380,000 fellow citizens. "We can do nothing to stop climate change on our own and so we have to buy land elsewhere," he told The Guardian, dubbing his scheme "an insurance policy for the worst possible outcome." Indeed, though the islands are responsible for an infinitesimal fraction of the world's carbon emissions, experts consider them among the most vulnerable spots on earth to the effects of global warming. If a September 2008 study published in the journal Science is to be believed, sea levels could rise by anywhere from two point six to six and a half feet by the year 2100-- essentially erasing the Maldives from the map altogether."

Trinidad and Tobago Express

Paradise Lost . NOW on PBS
Just this week, a top UN official predicted that by the middle of this century, the world should expect six million people a year to be displaced by increasingly severe storms and floods caused by climate change. But for many island nations in the South Pacific, climate change is already more than just a theory--it is a pressing, menacing reality. These small, low-lying islands are frighteningly vulnerable to rising temperatures and sea levels that could cause flooding and contaminate their fresh water wells. Within 50 years, some of them could be under water.

This week, NOW travels to the nation of Kiribati to see up close how these changes affect residents' daily lives and how they are dealing with the reality that both their land and culture could disappear from the Earth. We also travel to New Zealand to visit an I-Kiribati community that has already left its home, and to the Pacific Island Forum in Niue to see how the rest of the region is coping with the here-and-now crisis of climate change.
http://www.pbs.org/now/shows/449/ - 18k -
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Climate change experts in North and South America are increasingly worried by the potentially devastating implications of higher estimates for possible sea level rises.

The Americas have until now been seen as less vulnerable than other parts of the world like low-lying Pacific islands, Vietnam or Bangladesh.

But the increase in the ranges for anticipated sea level rises presented at a meeting of scientists in Copenhagen in March has alarmed observers in the region.

Parts of the Caribbean, Mexico and Ecuador are seen as most at risk. New York City and southern parts of Florida are also thought to be particularly vulnerable.....

A November 2008 study by UN-Habitat on the world's cities pointed out that in most Caribbean island states, 50% of the population lives within 2km (1.2 miles) of the coast. They would be directly affected by sea level rise and other climate impacts.

The Bahamas, the Guyanas, Belize and Jamaica have been pin-pointed by the World Bank as being particularly at risk from a one-metre rise.

The coastal plains around the city of Guayaquil in Ecuador, the country's main economic hub, are also known to be vulnerable to a combination of sea level rises, storms and sea surges.

New York would see an additional rise of about 20cm (7.8in) above the global mean due to Amoc by the turn of the century, according to Dr Yin's research published this year in the journal, Nature Geoscience. Florida would experience less than 10cm (3.9in).

"A one-metre rise could be a disaster for parts of Florida, particularly in the southern part of the state," Dr Yin told the BBC.

"Sea level rise superimposed on hurricane vulnerability makes for a very worrying situation."

Many scientists stress that it is not too late to mitigate the possible effects.

"We need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and to reduce coastal developments," Dr Yin says.

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JOHANNESBURG, 10 March 2009 (IRIN) - In the past few months, newspapers across the globe have been flooded with a debate over new studies projecting a higher and faster sea-level rise by the next century, which would sound the death-knell for low-lying countries and coastal cities. The debate has been fuelled by varying interpretations of the impact of melting ice, and by a new projection of up to 1.4m in sea-level rise by 2100, rather than a 2007 projection by the authoritative Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change (IPCC) of between 18cm and 59cm by that time, depending on a range of greenhouse-gas emission scenarios


ased on IPCC's findings a sea-level rise of 50 cm projected for the next 100 years is expected to occur mostly in the second half of the next century, according to Proudman Oceanographic Laboratory of UK's Natural Environment Council. "Consequently, rises of level for the next 20-30 years (your remaining lifetime) can be expected to be similar to those for the past 30 years (of the order of 10cm)". The impact of the sea-level rise is already unfolding. Island states such as the Papua New Guinea are already feeling the impact: in 2005, 1,000 residents on its Carteret atoll had to be evacuated as the rising sea level was slowly drowning their land. "We will also see an increase in storm surges," said Robert Bindschadler, chief scientist at the Hydrospheric and Biospheric Sciences Laboratory of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. Stefan Rahmstorf, a climate scientist and oceanographer at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, in Germany, who made the 1.4m projection and is attending the Copenhagen conference, said it was "very critical" that governments take into account the new findings "because of the long time-scale of sea-level rise". "Once set in motion, sea-level rise is impossible to stop. The only chance we have to limit sea-level rise to manageable levels (say, one metre, which is severe enough) is to reduce emissions very quickly, early in this century. Later it will be too late to do much," Rahmstorf commented.


Source: http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/IRIN/1cef4bf164bb445d9e4a5d2a2b0226b7.htm

"The Maldives and Kiribati highlight a hidden challenge for coping with climate change. It's not just about slowing the emissions of greenhouse gases. It's also about figuring out what to do for localities threatened with the possibility of extinction from rising ocean waters.

"They are like the canary in the coal mine in terms of the dramatic impact of climate change on a whole civilization of people," says Harvard University biological oceanographer James J. McCarthy, past president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. "They didn't cause the problem, but they will be among the first to feel it.""

Read the entire article at http://www.sciencenews.org/view/feature/id/40789/title/First_wave.

. . . . . . . . . . As mentioned in this film, the diet of the residents of this island has diminished in the past five years from planted crops and fish, to merely coconuts and fish. Food is running out, and since 1999, two islands have disappeared. Do we really need to keep burning Coal?

By Cristine Russell

February 28th, 2009; Vol.175 #5 (p. 24)

Summarised by Veronique Carola, Sea Level Rise Foundation

Special and Vulnerable

The island nations of Maldives and Kiribati highlight a hidden challenge for coping with climate change. It is now about figuring out what to do for localities threatened with the possibility of extinction from rising ocean waters. As says Harvard University biological oceanographer James J. McCarthy, "They didn't cause the problem, but they will be among the first to feel it."

These two exotic equatorial paradises may soon be the lowest spots on Earth and consequently are in danger of becoming the first drowning victims of global warming and sea level rise. In island and coastal countries, the impact may become so drastic that adaptation is not really an option, eventually forcing people out of their homes.

Since taking office in November, President of Maldives, Mr Mohamed Nasheed has been drawing international attention with his proposal to set aside funds to purchase lands abroad and relocate his population within this century.

For Kiribati, President Anote Tong has travelled the globe speaking to the UN and other international gatherings on how his country will suffer with climate change. He is not optimistic on getting land elsewhere but he is asking for help from various countries such as New Zealand and Australia.

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Posted By Rolph Payet to Climate Change and Sea Level Rise at 3/11/2009 01:07:00 A