President Mohamed Nasheed has come in 39th place in Foreign Policy magazine’s list of its Top 100 Global Thinkers on the back of a number of high-profile environmentally-themed speeches and commitments such as a national pledge to be carbon neutral by 2020.
The magazine, which chronicles international political development, chose the president in a list of figures it believes have had great significance on global affairs over the last eleven months, which has been topped this year jointly by business giants Bill Gates and Warren Buffet.
Pointing to a much publicised underwater conference held by the president in the Maldives last year – a promotional event designed to raise attention to cutting global output of greenhouse gas emissions amidst fears the country may be sunk by changing climate conditions – the magazine believed Nasheed has continued to be an important pioneer for greener political talk.
“Since taking office two years ago, Nasheed, a 43-year-old former human rights activist, has become the world’s most environmentally outspoken president,” the magazine claimed. “He has made his tiny country — a string of atolls in the Indian Ocean that sits an average of just 7 feet above sea level — a poster child for the need to stop global warming.”
Other names included in the list include US president Barrack Obama in third place, Oxford University economist Paul Collier at 29th place and Salam Fayyad, the Palestine prime minister, at 23.
As reported by Minivan News last week, Nasheed has continued to talk strongly about sustainability commitments. He claimed last week that failure to meet his government’s plan of becoming a carbon neutral country by 2020 would be a “disaster” for the nation and the wider development and promotion of alternative energy-driven economies as a whole.
The article praised the president particularly for comments made this year in the media calling for dynamic street action by citisens of the US to change political attitudes in the country that he has accused of being a significant “obstacle” to trying to battle climate change.
As a destination for green developments, environmental organisations such as Greenpeace have said they view the Maldives more as a symbol than a practical demonstration of how national development and fighting climate change can be mutually exclusive.
Wendel Trio, Climate Policy and Global Deal Coordinator for Greenpeace International, believed that the Maldives can nonetheless play an iconic role in promoting the potential benefits of adopting alternate energy programmes.
“By coupling both strong words and the need for the big emitting countries in the developed and the developing world to reduce their emissions sharply, with a strong commitment at home, the Maldives has gained respect,” Trio explained.
“However, obviously none of the big emitting countries are looking at the Maldives as an example, as they all claim that their social and economic development cannot be compared to that of a small island state.”
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