Wednesday, November 26, 2008

Maldives To Move Their Country

The country of Maldives is located on the bottom left corner of the map .... just a small dot.

I'm sure you have heard of political refugees or even economic refugees but have you ever heard of envinronmetal refugees.

You may see such people coming from Maldives in time to come. Not any doing of the present government but the culprits are many other countries in this world who are causing serious environmental defects.

Maldives' 1,200 islands / coral atolls are sinking fast. Average height of their land from sea level is roughly around 1.5 metres. By year 2100, the sea water surrounding Maldives is expected to rise by about 59 centimetres.

In order to solve this rising sea water, the government of Maldives has decided on a unprecedented move, to buy lands in another country and to request that country to recognise those lands as Maldives.

Brilliant move, isn't it? Imagine Malaysia's government decided one day to move to USA in order to be near their largest trading partner as that will save many costs indeed.

In Maldives' case, the government has thought of three countries i.e. India, Sri Lanka and Australia. The country has a population of 300,000 and strategically placing them properly shouldn't be a problem so India and Australia would be top choice. The country has set up an emergency account where a portion of the government's revenue will be channeled into it.

Told you it was unprecedented!
Tags: Environment, Maldives, Sea Level, Coral Atoll, Envinronmetal Refugees

7 comments:

eiling lim said...

sounds like an interesting move!

Johnny Ong said...

eiling - this is incredible .... just like moving house

foongpc said...

Interesting! I wonder if more countries suffering from lack of land will follow Maldives' move.

acura said...

Singapore is doing the exact same thing. Buying land in Iskandar, Johor

bayi said...

This is really thinking out of the box!

Johnny Ong said...

foong - those polynesian islands aren't faring well too

acura - oh yea, never thot of that haha

bayi - either they like that or learn to swim real fast

Bernard Chung said...

imagine I'm a Maldivian...
I shud think of getting double citizenship...

I guess it has some similarity like San Marino and Vatican City wrapped up inside Italy

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