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UN / MALDIVES
STORY: UN / MALDIVES
TRT: 4.00
SOURCE: UNTV / UNEP / UNICEF
RESTRICTIONS: NONE
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH / NATS
DATELINE: 21-22 SEPTEMBER 2009, NEW YORK CITY / FILE
FILE – UNTV – RECENT, NEW YORK CITY
1. Wide shot, exterior United Nations headquarters
UNTV – 22 SEPTEMBER 2009, NEW YORK CITY
2. Wide shot, President Mohamed Nasheed approaching the General Assembly podium
3. SOUNDBITE (English) Mohamed Nasheed, President of the Republic of Maldives:
“We will continue to play our allotted role as the world’s conscience on global warming: ‘the canary in the coalmine’ as some of us have called us. But we will ally that role with an equally determined effort to point the way out of the mine, to explain why it is in all of our interests to reach the surface, and to walk with you towards the light.”
FILE – UNEP – PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT, DATE UNKOWN, MALDIVES
3. SOUND OVER PICTURE (English) Mohamed Nasheed, President of the Republic of Maldives:
“If we don’t act now, my island nation will be submerged by the rising sea.”
FILE – UNICEF – 6-13 FEBRUARY 2009, MALDIVES
4. Aerial shot, an island and atoll
UNTV – 21 SEPTEMBER 2009, NEW YORK CITY
5. SOUNDBITE (English) Mohamed Nasheed, President of the Republic of Maldives:
“We are just 1.5 meters over the sea and even right now, a number of islanders are having to move homes from the islands to other places because of erosion, because of issues to do with the ocean.”
FILE – UNTV – DATE UNKNOWN, MALDIVES
6. Med shot, fishermen
7. Close up, fish
FILE – UNICEF – 6-13 FEBRUARY 2009, MALDIVES
8. Wide shot, marina
9. Wide shot, passenger ferry arriving at the jetty
10. Med shot, people getting off the boat
UNTV – 21 SEPTEMBER 2009, NEW YORK CITY
11. SOUNDBITE (English) Mohamed Nasheed, President of the Republic of Maldives:
“Vector-borne diseases, especially malaria has made a big come-back. Apparently mosquitoes are better at adaptation and they have adapted to the new environment and we’ve got a whole series of new diseases.”
FILE – UNICEF – 6-13 FEBRUARY 2009, MALDIVES
12. Aerial shot, resort in the Maldives
FILE – UNTV – DATE UNKNOWN, MALDIVES
13. Various shots, tourists at the beach
FILE – UNICEF – 5-8 DECEMBER 2007, MALE, MALDIVES
14. Various shots, motor bikers in Male'
FILE – UNICEF – 6-13 FEBRUARY 2009, MALDIVES
15. Wide shot, cars on the street
FILE – UNICEF – OCTOBER 2007, MALE, MALDIVES
16. Pan right, a school campus in Male', the capital
17. Med shot, students waiting in the hallway on a raining day
UNTV – 21 SEPTEMBER 2009, NEW YORK CITY
18. SOUNDBITE (English) Mohamed Nasheed, President of the Republic of Maldives:
“Mind you, Maldives has been there for the last five thousand years, and we have a written history for the last two thousand years. And it’s not easy to think about leaving, going, deserting; it’s not possible. We don’t know where we should go, but whenever there is huge tracts of empty land, it makes us think that finally solution might have to lie there.”
FILE – UNICEF – 23 MARCH 2005, MALDIVES
19. Wide shot, aerials of Raa Kan'Khulhudhoo
20. Pan left, rubble
21. Wide shot, rubble
22. Pan left, deserted street up to minaret
23. Med shot, deserted street on island
UNTV – 21 SEPTEMBER 2009, NEW YORK CITY
24. SOUNDBITE (English) Mohamed Nasheed, President of the Republic of Maldives:
“As I see it now, the Kyoto Protocol is a list of things that you can’t do, and you shouldn’t do, it’s a prohibition list. It would be very difficult for instance for any politician not to cut the ribbon when there are elections of opening up power plants. So what we are suggesting is we should be talking about renewable energy more, countries should agree to produce more energy, but green energy.”
FILE – UNICEF – 27 SEPTEMBER 2007, NILANDHOO, MALDIVES
25. Med shot, residents in Nilandhoo
26. Wide shot, street in Kolamaafushi
UNTV – 22 SEPTEMBER 2009, NEW YORK CITY
27. SOUNDBITE (English) Mohamed Nasheed, President of the Republic of Maldives:
“If things go business as usual, we will not live; we will die; our country will not exist. We cannot come out from Copenhagen as failures; we cannot make Copenhagen a pact for suicide.”
FILE – UNICEF – 6-13 FEBRUARY 2009, MALDIVES
28. Med shot, three people sitting on the beach
29. Wide shot, evening at the beach
The President of the Maldives today (22 September) told world leaders gathered at the UN in New York that his small-island nation was getting tired of “shouting about the perils of climate change” at meeting after meeting, and had therefore resolved to begin leading by example.
SOUNDBITE (English) Mohamed Nasheed, President of the Republic of Maldives:
“We will continue to play our allotted role as the world’s conscience on global warming: ‘the canary in the coalmine’ as some of us have called us. But we will ally that role with an equally determined effort to point the way out of the mine, to explain why it is in all of our interests to reach the surface, and to walk with you towards the light.”
SOUND OVER PICTURE (English) Mohamed Nasheed, President of the Republic of Maldives:
“If we don’t act now, my island nation will be submerged by the rising sea.”
The Maldives and its President Mohamed Nasheed have become something of a poster child for the effects of climate change on low-lying coastal states, vulnerable to a rise in sea levels linked to global warming.
SOUNDBITE (English) Mohamed Nasheed, President of the Republic of Maldives:
“We are just 1.5 meters over the sea and even right now, a number of islanders are having to move homes from the islands to other places because of erosion, because of issues to do with the ocean.”
In an interview with UNifeed ahead of today’s UN climate change summit, Nasheed noted that other effects of global warming are also being felt already, such as a slump over the last four years in fishing yields – a Maldives mainstay - because of higher ocean temperatures.
Global warming is also affecting the coral reefs that protect the Maldives’ 2,000 islands from the ocean and are one of the big attractions pulling in an average of 700,000 tourists to the archipelago each year.
Meanwhile, Nasheed says other critters appear to be benefiting from a changing climate.
SOUNDBITE (English) Mohamed Nasheed, President of the Republic of Maldives:
“Vector-borne diseases, especially malaria has made a big come-back. Apparently mosquitoes are better at adaptation and they have adapted to the new environment and we’ve got a whole series of new diseases.”
The UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has warned that a sea level rise of just 60 centimeters over the next hundred years could lead the Maldives to disappear entirely.
As part of his plan to “lead by example” in mitigating climate change, Nasheed has now vowed to make his own country carbon-neutral by 2020 – and that means starting with the Maldives’ biggest industry, tourism.
The Maldives government recently announced a three-dollar-a-day environment tax for tourists, and says it wants to wean the islands from fossil fuels onto renewable energy.
Nasheed has also made headlines with a rather more radical initiative that he says he is seriously pursuing, but only as a last resort: to buy a new homeland in another country for the Maldives’ 300,000-strong population, should their islands become uninhabitable one day.
SOUNDBITE (English) Mohamed Nasheed, President of the Republic of Maldives:
“Mind you, Maldives has been there for the last five thousand years, and we have a written history for the last two thousand years. And it’s not easy to think about leaving, going, deserting; it’s not possible. We don’t know where we should go, but whenever there is huge tracts of empty land, it makes us think that finally solution might have to lie there.”
Maldivians got a taste of what it might feel like to become environmental refugees in 2004, when the Indian Ocean tsunami washed over the islands, decimated some and left only a handful intact from flooding and devastation.
Despite the gloomy outlook for the Maldives, Nasheed says he sees no value in pointing fingers at the big emitters of greenhouse gases. Instead he calls for a new, pragmatic “understanding among nations” to inspire the follow-up framework currently under negotiation to replace the Kyoto Protocol.
Above all, his hopes lie with the jobs and prosperity that could come with a serious investment in renewable energy.
SOUNDBITE (English) Mohamed Nasheed, President of the Republic of Maldives:
“As I see it now, the Kyoto Protocol is a list of things that you can’t do, and you shouldn’t do, it’s a prohibition list. It would be very difficult for instance for any politician not to cut the ribbon when there are elections of opening up power plants. So what we are suggesting is we should be talking about renewable energy more, countries should agree to produce more energy, but green energy.”
Nasheed has no illusions that his tiny nation’s own willingness to “jump first” and become carbon-neutral can change its fate. That is in the hands of the bigger powers he is urging to end “twenty years of complacency and broken promises” on climate change when they meet in Copenhagen in December.
SOUNDBITE (English) Mohamed Nasheed, President of the Republic of Maldives:
“If things go business as usual, we will not live; we will die; our country will not exist. We cannot come out from Copenhagen as failures; we cannot make Copenhagen a pact for suicide.”
Mohamed Nasheed, a former journalist and political prisoner, is the Maldives’ first democratically elected president. He took office in October 2008 following the 30-year rule of Maumoon Abdul Gayoom.
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