AfricanDiver.com

Ministers in the Maldives have taken diving lessons ahead of an underwater cabinet meeting that will highlight the threat global warming and rising sea levels pose to the low-lying atoll nation.

President Mohamed Nasheed will chair the meeting on October 17 ahead of the world climate change summit in Copenhagen in December, a spokesman said from the islands’ capital, Male. He said the 14-member cabinet were taught scuba-diving basics over the weekend. Nasheed was not present as he is already a certified diver.

“The cabinet will don wet suits and scuba equipment and dive to a depth of six metres, where a special meeting of the cabinet will be convened,” the spokesman said. “They will then ratify a pledge calling on other nations to slash greenhouse gas emissions ahead of the Copenhagen meeting.”

Cabinet members will communicate using whiteboards and hand signals. The Maldivian archipelago is on the front line of climate change. In 2007, the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warned that a rise in sea levels of 7 to 23 inches by 2100 would be enough to make the Maldives virtually uninhabitable.