Politicians rarely admit when they sink to new depths but for the Maldives government, it's a badge of honour when fighting global warming is concerned.
President Mohamed Nasheed is to host an underwater cabinet meeting on October 24 to draw attention to the impact of climate change on the Indian Ocean archipelago, his office told AFP on Friday.
"The purpose of the underwater cabinet meeting is to show commitment from the highest political level to the 350.org Global Day of Climate Action," it quoted Deputy Undersecretary Aminath Shauna as saying.
350.org is a grassroots group campaigning for present levels of carbon dioxide (CO2) to be reduced to 350 parts per million (ppm) to restore Earth's atmosphere to safe levels.
Clad in scuba gear and communicating by whiteboards and hand signals, the 14 cabinet members will approve a statement "from Maldivian citizens" that will be presented at the December 7-18 UN climate summit in Copenhagen.
"We call upon all citizens from all countries, big and small, rich and poor, high and low, to join hands and reduce carbon emissions and bring down the level of carbon in the atmosphere to below 350 ppm," the statement will read.
350.org's founder, Bill McKibben, an environmentalist who wrote The End of Nature, said some ministers were diving neophytes and would undergo scuba training to attend the motion-in-the-ocean meeting.
"It will be an actual, official session of the government, but it will be underwater," he told AFP by phone.
Maldives comprises 1,192 coral islets that lie on average just 1.5 metres above sea level.
A warmer sea will translate into higher water levels, through thermal expansion of the ocean and storm surges. It will also damage coral, on which the islands depend for fishing and tourism.
The danger is so acute that the Maldives has even been thinking aloud about buying a "homeland" in Australia or in neighbouring India or Sri Lanka for its 330,000 people.
"Climate change is no joke for us: rising and warming seas pose an existential threat to the Maldives," the email to AFP quoted Shauna as saying.
"We hope climate demonstrations around the world on October 24 will pressure world leaders to seal an ambitious deal."
The chief goal of the December talks is to secure a deal on curbing emissions of heat-trapping carbon gases, mainly the result of unchecked burning of fossil fuels.
Atmospheric concentrations of CO2 surged 2.2 ppm in 2007 to reach 383 ppm, a research consortium called the Global Carbon Project reported in September 2008.
Levels were 37 per cent above the benchmark of 1750 when the start of the Industrial Revolution unleashed voracious use of coal, oil and gas.
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