NEW DELHI, Oct. 22 (UPI) -- The Maldives president called on India to lead the world in a "green power revolution."
Speaking at a climate-change conference in New Delhi Thursday, President Mohammad Nasheed called attention to the Maldives' vulnerability to climate change and appealed to neighboring India to help his country survive the rising seas that threaten to submerge the Maldives archipelago as a result of global warming.
"India led the world in the agricultural, green revolution of the 1970s," said Nasheed. "I believe it is in India's national interest to lead the world again, in the green power revolution," he said, adding that India has "the moral authority that comes with being the world's largest democracy," reports Maldives independent news service Minivan.
In 2007 the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change predicted that rising sea levels of up to 58 centimeters would swamp many of the Maldives' 1,192 low-lying islands.
Nasheed called for a reduction of the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere to 350 parts per million from the current level of 387. "Here is the inconvenient truth: We need to peak global emissions, not in 10, 20 or 50 years, but now," he said.
The president said that even though the West had been polluting for more than a century, this did not mean the developing world was free from responsibility.
"We, in the developing world, say we are innocent of the climate crime. Compared to rich, heavily polluting countries, we are innocent," Nasheed said. "But, with each passing day, as our emissions soar, we become more complicit in the climate crime."
To rise to the challenge of climate change, he said, nations should embrace renewable technology and provide green energy at a cheaper cost than fossil fuels.
Stressing that the Maldives wants "to focus less on our plight and more on our potential," the president said his country plans to go carbon neutral within a decade by switching to 100 percent renewable energy. Currently, the Maldives' emissions are 2.4 tons per person annually, Nasheed said. His aim is to reduce that amount to zero.
Since coming to power last year, Nasheed has been outspoken about climate change. On Friday the Maldives government ministers held the first underwater Cabinet meeting to highlight the threat of global warming.
"For the Maldives, climate change is no vague or abstract irritation, but a clear and present danger to our very existence," the president said at the New Delhi conference. "We don't want to trade paradise for an environmental refugee camp."
