The Maldives is made up of an archipelago of 1200 islands stretching roughly 800 kilometers in a north south direction in the Indian Ocean. They are sometimes referred to as the jewel of the Indian Ocean due to their outstanding natural beauty but they are at risk from the sea because the whole group of islands is only a few meters above sea level.

A rise of half a metre in the Indian Ocean would render pretty much all of them uninhabitable. Popular island resorts such as Filitheyo island, Baros island and Bandos island may be lost to the sea within the next 50 years.

These islands are not only threatened by sea-level rises however, they are also under threat from ocean warming. Coral reefs are very sensitive to change in temperature and warmer oceans would destroy these reefs that play a significant part in protecting islands from wave erosion.

Whilst global warming has tended to be a point of conjecture among environmentalists, the unprecedented event of the rapid melting of Arctic sea ice in 2007 has caused many environmentalists to agree that warming is not only inevitable, but is happening more rapidly than was originally suspected.

James Hansen, a leading climatologist, published a research paper in 2008 which demonstrated that the safe atmospheric limit for carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was 350 parts per million, anything higher bringing about a negative envrionmental impacts. The level of CO2 is already at a concentration of 390 ppm and rising.

The Maldives are not the only country under immediate threat, countries like Bangladesh are already suffering flooding to the sea levels have risen in the last decade; forests across western North America and Europe are succumbing to non-native pests that are moving into these warmer areas.

The fact that many countries are already suffering the effects of global warming is probably the main reason why no one is totally happy with the recent pledge of the G8 nations to take steps to try and restrict temperature increase to 2 degrees and atmospheric concentration of Carbon Dioxide to 450 parts per million. A few years ago, these levels might have been realistic but current scientific findings indicate that they are out of date.

Over 100 world leaders will meet later this month (October 2009) for the United Nations? Climate Change Summit. On 24th October 2009, the Maldives will hold the largest underwater political demonstration in history with and divers taking banners down to the coral reefs as a publicity stunt to remind everyone of what is at stake. At present we are not totally sure, but it seems inevitable that holidays to the Maldives may be over in the future.

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 29th, 2009 at 9:51 am and is filed under Maldives Holidays. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.