Ex-Maldives president to tell Cop26: do not compromise on 1.5C
Five months after narrowly surviving a terrorist bomb attack, the former president of the Maldives Mohamed Nasheed will arrive at the Cop26 summit with a defiant message: no compromise on 1.5C. That level of global heating is the most ambitious target on the table at Glasgow. It will require a global mobilisation of resources at a scale not seen outside wartime and at least a halving of fossil fuel emissions and tree burning by the end of this decade.
Many oil exporting nations are reluctant to move this quickly, but Nasheed says small island states cannot accept anything less because they are already losing land and people to rising seas. “I think 1.5C must be asked for again and restated and never left. Anything above 1.5C and the Maldives will not be there. We cannot sign a suicide pact,” he told the Guardian.
Small island states such as the Maldives are often seen as the conscience of the Cop process because they are most at risk of climate chaos and push hardest for deep emissions cuts. But Nasheed said it would be a mistake for people in other parts of the world to think they were safer. “This is not a distant problem for little coloured people in the Indian Ocean, it is all of our problem,” he said. “The whole thing is framed as if it is just these tiny, sad islands losing land and people. But no, we are losing people everywhere. Usually you hear about flood deaths in Asia. Now we are getting the same news in Europe. If you don’t listen to us, listen to your own people, who are dying in front of your eyes.”
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Nasheed is among the most outspoken climate advocates on Earth. He has often suffered for his belief in democracy and opposition to destructive modes of development, which are all the more remarkable in a politically turbulent nation that has often been ruled by dictators. He has spent six years in jail where he was tortured and thrown into solitary confinement for months at a time. He has been similarly brave and outspoken on global heating. The veteran climate activist Bill McKibben has described him as one of only a handful of true world leaders in the fight to save the planet.
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He is frustrated by the world’s biggest emitter, China. “They still think it is their right to poison the planet because Europeans have done it in the past. This is a mad idea, as if they are saying ‘the west has brought us to the brink and now we have arrived to push everyone over the edge’. Two wrongs don’t make a right, especially now there is new technology as an alternative to fossil fuels.” But he says a younger group of civil servants in China appear to hold more progressive views than the old guard. Nasheed hopes rich nations fulfil their promise of $100bn a year in climate finance starting from 2020, but said cash should not be a substitute for emissions-cutting action.
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https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/nov/01/ex-maldives-president-to-tell-cop26-do-not-compromise-on-15c
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