The Minister of Environment, Dr. Hussain Rasheed Hassan has said that nations need to invest more on sustainable energy in order to take appropriate action to mitigate against global warming. The Minister gave this statement at the COP25, the UN Climate Change Conference held in Madrid.
He noted that the Maldives is an Atoll nation where the dry land is less than 2% of the territory and 80% of the dry land is just less than 1 meter above average sea level. And that in less than 10 years from now, as much as 70-90% or 99% of the coral reefs will be destroyed if we fail to take proper action against climate change.
“A devastating effect of this will be the catastrophic erosion and flooding of our islands and irreversible negative impacts on our tourism and fisheries industries,” the Minister said.
During his speech, the Minister highlighted upon the measurements taken by Maldives to mitigate the crisis. “As much as 20% of our public sector investment programme for next year is on climate adaptation and mitigation. This shows our high level of commitment “.
“To invest in our renewable energy, to provide adequate water and sanitation for our people, to protect our shorelines against coastal erosion and tidal waves, and to implement other transformational changes, Maldives needs at least another 0.5 billion US Dollars in the next five years. This is truly an unavoidable cost our people have to bear, for being climate victims.”
Minister of Environment strongly stressed upon effective implementation of the Paris Agreement which is contingent on availability of additional, new and predictable financing. He further highlighted that President, Ibrahim Mohamed Solih, at the UN Secretary General’s Climate Action Summit launched a Climate Smart Resilient Islands initiative which intends to bring a transformational change to the life and livelihoods of the island communities.
