Maldivian President Mohamed Nasheed on Monday called on vulnerable countries participating in a two-day climate change summit to commit to going carbon neutral.
Since coming to power last year, Nasheed has fast become the moral voice of climate change and in March pledged to make the Maldives the first carbon neutral country in the world by swapping diesel for renewable energy and offsetting carbon
emissions.
"If vulnerable, developing countries make a commitment to carbon neutrality, those opposed to change have nowhere left to hide," the president told the meeting on Monday,with less than a month left to the UN climate change negotiations in
Copenhagen this December.
"We know this is not an easy step to take and there might be dangers along the way. We want to shine a light, not loudly demand that others go first into the dark," Nasheed added.
In his keynote speech, Nasheed said he believed that a "global survival pact" by like-
minded vulnerable countries would give participants a bargaining tool in
Copenhagen.
The president's appeal comes three days after climate change negotiations in Barcelona ended in an impasse with poor nations demanding rich countries commit to drastic cuts in greenhouse gas emissions and the latter resistant.
At Monday's summit, held a short boat ride away from the capital Male at Bandos Island
Resort, Mark Lynas, the British climate change expert responsible for drawing up the Maldives' carbon neutral plan, spoke about the possibilities of cutting carbon.
The Maldives' plan focuses predominantly on wind and solar power, backed up by battery. Last week, the Maldives signed an agreement for a
200-million-U.S.-dollar 75 megawatt wind farm, which will take the country one-fifth of the way closer to achieving carbon neutrality.
"Don't let anyone tell you it is too late to stop climate change," said Lynas.
"It is possible to stop it with political will. The world needs to quit carbon ...abandoning
a form of development we now know to be wrong," Lynas said.
Scientists on the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change predict rising sea levels of between 18 cm and 59 cm will submerge most of the Maldives' islands, 80 percent of which are less than 1. 5 meters above sea level.
Last month, Nasheed led his cabinet in the world's first underwater cabinet meeting to draw attention to the vulnerability of his country.
President Anote Tong of Kiribati, foreign and environment ministers from Bangladesh,Nepal, Vietnam, Ghana, Kenya and Tanzania, as well as representatives from Barbados and Bhutan are taking part in the summit also called Climate Vulnerable Forum.
hina, Denmark, France, Japan, the Netherlands, Norway, Russia, Britain and the United States are attending the forum as observers.