How We Talk About “Climate Refugees” and Why It’s Complicated

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ellen-bechtel/how-we-talk-about-climate_b_4958311.html

MALDIVES – Using hand signals and whiteboards to communicate, President Mohamed Nasheed of the Maldives held a Cabinet meeting underwater in 2009.”

Nasheed’s watery stunt came just months before the 2009 UN climate summit in Copenhagen, which ultimately failed to create any sound policy on climate change or sea level rise. The Maldives, a collection of islands in the Indian Ocean less than 6 feet above sea level, are precariously perched on the front line of climate change because they are likely to be the first country to be entirely consumed due to rising sea levels and continuing carbon emissions. Thus the small island nation is particularly vulnerable to how international institutions like the UN address (or fail to address) climate change.