After six years of jail, torture and exile, the former investigative journalist became his country's first democratically elected president, peacefully overturning a 30-year dictatorship to make the Maldives one of the first Islamic countries in the world to embrace multi-party politics.
But winning the presidency three years ago has just been the start of Nasheed's problems. The Maldives — a chain of 1,191 islands in the middle of the Indian Ocean — is being swallowed by the sea. It may be a tropical paradise for the thousands of tourists who visit it each year but it is also the lowest country on earth. Its highest point is just 2.5 metres above sea level and 80 per cent of the land is less than a metre above water.
Scientists predict that even if sustained action is taken against global warming, parts of the country will be under water in as little as 40 years. That will end not only tourism but also the livelihoods of its 400,000 inhabitants. So Nasheed, 44, has turned himself from a democracy campaigner into a climate change campaigner — using some unusual statecraft and ruffling a number of diplomatic feathers along the way.
At climate change talks in Copenhagen he accredited a film crew as part of the official Maldivian delegation so they could get into private parts of the meetings and relay to the world what was going on behind closed doors. He held the world's first underwater cabinet meeting, using sign language to draw attention to what would happen to his country if sea levels continued to rise. And last year he pledged to make his country the first in the world to be carbon neutral, with a target date of 2020.
On Friday Nasheed was in London en route to the Toronto Film Festival for the premier of a documentary about his first year in office and the climate change campaign. He hopes the film — The Island President — will raise awareness of what is going on in his country, particularly in the US, where it opens this year.
A small, dapper man who rarely stays still, Nasheed unashamedly compares his previous struggle for democracy in the Maldives with the fight against climate change. His rise to power and its aftermath is a remarkable tale: instead of sending his predecessor, Maumoon Gayoom, to prison or exile, Nasheed allowed him to stay and become leader of the opposition. Last year Nasheed was named by Newsweek as one of the world's 10 best leaders. He says he wants to use the international interest in his story as a spur to highlight the effect of climate change. Read the full report here.
Source: Oliver Wright/The Independent, Times of Oman.
