The Criminal Court yesterday convicted two persons identified by police as dangerous criminals.
The court identified the pair as Hassan Ali of Fares-Mathoda in Gaafu Dhaalu Atoll, who was sentenced to three years, and Aseel Ismail, who was sentenced to seven years.
The pair was sentenced after the Criminal Court found them guilty of attacking Riluwan Faruhath last year in December, on Boduthakurufaanu Magu in Male’.
At today’s hearing the judge said that Aseel had confessed that he had an altercation with Riluwan that day and attacked him with a machete.
Hassan was charged for assisting Aseel in fleeing after attacking Riluwan.
In March this year, Hassaan and Aseel were arrested again during a special operation conducted to avoid potential clashes between rival gangs following the fatal stabbing of 21 year-old Ahusan Basheer.
Recently two individuals, Ali Shareef and Maadhih Mohamed, were sentenced to jail after the court found both guilty of stabbing Ismail Firdhause of Feydhoo in Addu City on February 24 2011, when he got off the Hulhumale’ ferry.
Because it was the first time both had been found guilty of a crime violating the Act, Maadhih was sentenced to eight years and Shareef to 12 years in prison.
Both had denied the charges against them, however the court granted the police authority to hold them in custody until their trial was concluded.
Maadhih and Shareef both admitted that they were in the area when the incident occurred but denied that they were involved in it or that they knew anybody in the gang that attacked Firdhause.
New forms of air travel have the potential to revolutionise the sector’s ecological impact, said UK entrepreneur Sir Richard Branson, founder of the Virgin empire.
Speaking at the Slow Life Symposium held at the Maldives’ Soneva Fushi resort, Branson said engineers currently working on his carbon composite Virgin Galactic spacecraft were itching to get started on a high-speed passenger aircraft that would fly out of the atmosphere, fire its rockets harmlessly into space, and re-enter the atmosphere angled at the destination.
“Intercontinental flights that leave Earth atmosphere and pop back down won’t damage the atmosphere while they are outside it,” Branson said. “It will only work if it is economic, but I hope to see it in my lifetime. Once we’ve got Virgin Galactic ticked off, we’ll look at carbon-fibre intercontinental planes. They’ll effectively be spaceships.”
The Virgin Galactic spacecraft already created less carbon output per passenger than a return ticket from New York to London, he noted.
“That compares with two weeks of New York’s electricity supply to send up a space shuttle. We’ve realised that we could put satellites into space for a fraction of the existing cost and carbon output. Schools and universities would be able to afford their own satellites.”
Virgin Galactic would be up and running in 12 months, Branson predicted, offering acceleration of “0-3000 miles an hour in eight seconds. It will be the ride of a lifetime.”
A significant breakthrough, he noted, had been avoiding the need for a precisely-angled re-entry.
“Our spaceship turns into a giant shuttlecock which slows it down and avoids much of the G-force. The pilot can be asleep as you re-enter.”
On the podium with Branson was Jose Mariano, a former Boeing aerospace engineer and founder of zero2infinity, which is currently developing a commercially-viable near-orbital balloon for scientific purposes.
Mariano’s balloon and uniquely-shaped pressurised capsule reaches 36 kilometres, high enough for passengers to see the curvature of the Earth. Virgin Galactic reaches 100 kilometres – the definition of space according to the US Air Force – while the International Space Station is located at 400 kilometres.
“There is no physical boundary or line to define ‘space’,” says Mariano. “What matters is planetary awareness, and what matters to scientists is having a vantage point from where they can clearly see the planet as an island amidst the cold, vast emptiness.
“If it is useful to have a scientist in a space station at 400km, I think it is useful to have a scientist in-between. NASA is realising this and asking companies like ours what we can do there – this region above controlled airspace has not really been explored.”
Mariano recalled a series of interviews with astronauts who had reached the boundries of space where the shape of the planet was clearly visible.
“The writer gave an overview of how each felt before and after the trip – they became much more aware of global problems, specifically ecological ones. Imagine flying a balloon high enough that the sky turns completely black and sun brighter and lighter than ever before, where the line of the horizon bends to a perfect curve and the Earth is blue below you. Up there it is obvious everything is interconnected – a powerful thing for a human to experience.”
Mariano expressed frustration with the slow pace of aviation over the last 50 years, and the lack of support for entrepreneurial companies with unconventional ideas, at least for machines “other than predator drones.”
“Our project is a large scientific balloon that carries a pressurised pod to 36 kilometres, stays up for two hours and comes back with parachutes. There is no rocket or high speed re-entry, making it a lot less attractive for high acceleration thrill seekers. But the whole operation has zero carbon emissions – there is no engine, just helium and stored electricity. Parachutes improve the landing tremendously, and our test flight landed where we expected. People can be waiting for you there with a coconut.”
That unmanned test flight successfully reached 33km, while a manned flight was forthcoming, Mariano said.
Branson outlined his own ballooning career, in which he funded and flew a balloon with the goal of reaching 35,000 feet and crossing the Atlantic. At the time the ballooning record was 600 miles at 8000 feet.
“I was initially quite sceptical, but I find in life it is more fun to say yes rather than no,” he said. “So I went off to Spain to get my ballooning license, and two weeks later I not only had my license but was trying to fly the balloon in a jet stream with 140 mile and hour winds, on my own, with three or four hours of lessons. “The highest we reached has 44,000 feet. It was a great adventure, and the first of six times I was pulled out of the sea by helicopters while trying to break ballooning records.”
A week after the Slow Life Symposium, Branson will open the world’s first commercial spaceport in New Mexico.
“We’re also working on underwater – building a manned submarine that can go to the bottom of the ocean at 37,000 feet and come back up. 80 percent of the species on Earth have yet to be discovered because we can’t explore the oceans properly.”
The submarine is due for its pressure test next year, Branson said, in which it would have to contend with 16,000 times the pressure a plane has to cope with.
“You can do it in a solid block of metal, but that doesn’t give you a good view. We are going to try using carbon fibre, and the plan is to go to the five deepest places in the world. Nobody has been more than 20,000-30,000 feet – I will take it down the Porto Rican trench, which goes to 28,000 feet, deeper than Everest is high. Someone else will take it down the Mariana trench, which is 38,000 feet.
Mariano meanwhile observed that most of the world’s technology, from telecoms to medicine and aerospace, had been “a product of war”.
“Hopefully we are now a more aware species we can move on and create things not out of fear and war. Many good ideas have become casualties for lack of funding – for instance a type of hybrid airship that mixes aerodynamic lift with lifting gases. This kind of airship is very slow and can be used for cargo, but if you have a nice room and can be productive and comfortable on board then I’m sure that has its market.”
Branson had a last word for the skeptics: “People say such things will never happen. Dream – and then make your dreams a reality.”
Under the proposed legislation, an experienced Muslim foreigner may be appointed among the seven-judge bench for the court, which will have jurisdiction to handle cases relating to transactions concerning tourism, construction, international business, insurance, civil aviation, maritime, shipping, leasing, banking and finance, securities, fishing, company disputes, partnership, professional liability and intellectual property rights.
The mercantile court will also handle contract, trade and service provision, consumer and service recipient protection in cases worth more than Rf15 million (US$1 million).
During today’s preliminary debate on the bill, opposition MPs raised concern that allowing a foreign judge to sit on a Maldivian court would threaten the country’s independence.
MP Ibrahim Muttalib, who recently rejoined the religious conservative Adhaalath Party, alleged that the bill was part of a government “plot to destroy and dis-empower the judiciary.”
“We should be alert to the government’s efforts to change this country’s constitutional system with the scheming of the Jews,” he said, adding that the bill was drafted “under this scheme” by Independent MP for Kulhudhufushi South Mohamed Nasheed, who served as Legal Reform Minister in the last years of the former government.
“If this court is established, in order to bring the judiciary into disrepute, within a few days of its formation there will be courts established in every inhabited island and existing courts will be made redundant,” he claimed.
Other opposition MPs contended that there were enough qualified professionals with the requisite experience in the Maldives.
“If there aren’t competent enough judges, they can be trained,” suggested MP Hassan Latheef.
Appointing foreign judges to a Maldivian court was “completely unacceptable,” said MP Abdul Azeez Jamal Abubakur, objecting to different criteria for Maldivian and foreign judges in the bill.
MP Dr Abdulla Mausoom of the Dhivehi Rayyithunge Party (DRP) acknowledged the need for the legislation but questioned the provision for two foreign judges.
Presenting the legislation on behalf of the government, MP Mohamed Musthafa of the ruling Maldivian Democratic Party (MDP) stressed the “urgent” importance of establishing international standards for dispute resolution in the Maldivian judiciary.
The lack of legal protection for foreign investors in the country was “the main challenge” to operating their businesses, Musthafa explained.
The provision to allow a foreign judge on the bench is to seek expert assistance from foreign judges to establish the court, Musthafa continued, which would have the same status or rank as a superior court.
The court would also have the authority to transfer cases from other courts that fall under its jurisdiction.
Investor confidence
The legislation comes in the wake of concerns aired by international organisations such as the International Committee of Jurists (ICJ) that the existing Maldivian judiciary lacked the independence and capacity to rule in cases involving complex civil proceedings.
Speaking to Minivan News in March after several weeks observing the operation of the Maldives’ Judicial Services Commission (JSC), former Australian Supreme Court Justice Professor Murray Kellam said that an impartial judicial system was a key factor in encouraging foreign investment and could have a direct and significant impact on the economy.
This was something that Singapore recognised 15 years ago, he said.
“They understood the value of a civil system that is incorruptible and competent. They spent a lot of money on their judiciary and Transparency International now rates their civil legal system as one of the best in the world.
“Singapore realised that one of the best ways to attract investment was to have a system whereby international investors knew they would get a fair go in domestic courts. If you look at the circumstances in other parts of the world where investors have no confidence in the judiciary, that deters investment and takes it offshore. They’ll go somewhere else.
Citing Adam Smith, considered one of the founders of modern capitalism, Kellam observed that “Commerce and manufacturers can seldom flourish long in any state which does not enjoy a regular administration of justice, in which people do not feel themselves secure in possession of their property, in which the faith of contracts is not supported by law.”
As a foreign investor, Kellam said, “you want to know that contact you enter into with domestic partners will be understood and enforced by courts if there is a breach. You want courts to judge you impartially – you don’t want to be discriminated against because you are a foreigner.”
“Secondly, it’s no good getting judgement if no there is enforcement – which is a major factor in developing countries. Sure you can get a judgement, but it’s not worth the paper it’s written on because there is no process for getting it enforced, and you can’t turn judgements into anything productive.”
Singapore had recognised this, and become not only a hub for foreign investment but also a regional hub for commercial arbitration, Kellam said.
“People from around the region will use Singapore as a place of law and business,” Kellam observed.
President Mohamed Nasheed’s energy advisor Mike Mason has unveiled the technical and economic justification for transforming the Maldives into a solar-powered nation.
“I have the oily rag job,” said the former mining engineer, speaking at Soneva Fushi’s Slow Life Eco Symposium about the government’s ambition to generate 60 percent of the country’s electricity needs through solar. “It’s a bit like trying to build a complex aircraft while the captain’s trying to fly it.”
Last year the Maldives spent 16 percent of its GDP on fossil fuels, making the country staggeringly vulnerable to even the tiniest oil price fluctuations and adding an economic imperative to renewable energy adoption.
Mason evaluated available renewable alternatives to diesel and concluded that solar was the most abundant, cost-effective and realistic resource to exploit.
“We can forget ocean currents for now,” he said, explaining that as the currents were wind driven and therefore seasonal, marine current generators would only generate significant electricity for half the year.
Ocean thermal was “very exciting”, Mason observed, although he noted that Soneva Fushi bore the scars of a failed ocean thermal project: “I suggest we wait for someone else to pioneer this,” he said.
Biomass generation “fits us rather well”, as even if the most expensive form of biomass was imported from Canada it would represent 50-66 percent the current cost of diesel.
“It is cheap but can only be used at scale, such as Male’ and possibly Addu,” he said.
Wind and solar
That left wind and solar, the potential for which was “fascinating”.
The challenge with wind, however, was that it was inconsistent, and there were large periods of the year with little resource available.
“What do you do in the eight months without enough wind?” Mason asked, displaying wind data collected in the country’s north.
“What you do is put up solar. In that case, why bother to put up wind at all? With solar the sun rises every day – it is wonderfully predictable.”
The trick was going to be to transform solar from a green, niche, “subsidy hungry creature, to something so obvious that the current government of the time sees it as a sensible and intelligent thing to do. The reality is that it is easy to get to 30-40% emission reduction, but getting beyond first stage to the 80-90 percent that has been proposed by cabinet will be more difficult.”
Mason collected data concerning the cost of generating electricity using diesel at 100 of the country’s inhabited islands, “as I felt there was not enough data available”, and found staggering levels of inefficiency.
The numbers, he said, “are really scary. At best it costs 28-29 cents to produce a kilowatt hour, but at the top right of the graph it is costing 77 cents per kilowatt hour. Anything beyond 28-29 cents for a big island and 32-33 cents for a small island is just money being burned.”
The Maldives could quickly and easily save US$0.5-1 million dollars a month “simply by fixing power stations by doing boring, sensible stuff.”
“Diesel engines are designed to work at their rated power – they like going flat out. The moment you back off by half, you end up with a less efficient engine. Many islands have power stations with engines out of proportion to the size of the island’s energy needs – in some cases they are running at 15-25 percent capacity. That is a real cost we have.”
Mason then displayed a graph detailing the cost of providing solar, and observed that the cost plummeted quickly when it came to providing 30-40 percent of the country’s energy needs but sharply increased thereafter to a point where it was less competitive.
The challenge, he explained, was storage – how to retain electricity to operate devices such as lights, fridges and air-conditioners at night.
“Energy storage is the big hole in our story here. The key for me is to reach that 80 percent goal without the [cost] graph rising beyond where it is today,” Mason explained.
Using data detailing the energy use patterns of the island of Maalhos in Baa Atoll, Mason observed a high variability in power demand. Introducing solar without storage – “from panel to fridge” – would complicate that by requiring more flexibility from the existing power plant.
Energy Advisor Mike Mason
“Stick a solar panel on [Maalhos] and you can generate 29kw at midday with zero demand [on the powerplant]. But the maximum you need from the powerplant [without solar] is 42kw. This is a fundamental problem – the more solar you get, the more we have to get the power stations right.”
The cost of providing solar electricity straight from the panel was far below the cost of using diesel on any island, including Male’. On Maalhos, by pointing the solar panel in the same direction all day, “you can meet midday demand easily. But between 6-11 am in the morning, and after 2pm in the afternoon, you still need to meet the cooling load of fridges and air-conditioners.”
Mason had two suggestions – the first was to use (more expensive) tracking solar panels that would follow the sun and extend the daytime period in which demand could be met using solar. This would also generate the maximum yield from each panel, mitigating another problem – space.
“The challenge will be getting tracking to work in a hot, humid, salty environment,” he acknowledged, particularly if the panels were mounted in shallow lagoons.
The cost of providing electricity from solar in conjunction with current commercially available battery technology was not much different from existing diesel arrangements on many islands, Mason observed. “You lose 20 percent of the electricity putting it in and taking it back out, and it is expensive to fix. It’s not good enough.”
However on Maalhos, Mason noted, 28 percent of the electricity demand was for cooling.
“I had a think about storage. We could use really cold water refrigerated during the day, and use that to drive air-conditioning and fridges at night. This applies as much to resorts as it does home islands.”
This innovation would drop the cost to the level of the country’s most efficient diesel generators, Mason explained. For those powerplants currently running at 77 cents a kilowatt, “this is an opportunity to print money – and there aren’t many of those available to the government.”
Challenges
The major problem was obtaining the capital, Mason said, estimating that such an overhaul for the nation would cost US$2-3 billion, “although half of that would come from the tourist industry.”
“With renewable energy, on day 1 you buy 25 years of electricity. It might be cheap, but you still need enough cash on day 1.”
Attracting the investment in a country such as France or Germany would be “a no brainer”, Mason said, however because of the Maldives turbulent political history and fiscal deficit, it had a very weak credit rating.
“There is a shortage of knowledge and skills as well,” he said. “We need an energy technology support unit, and an energy finance corporation that can for this project provide guarantees and get countries to underwrite us. We do not want to be reliant by subsidies.”
In response to a question regarding the planned Gaafaru wind farm, Mason acknowledged the build, own and operate agreement STELCO had signed with Chinese wind turbine manufacturer XEMC to develop a 50mw wind farm at Gaafaru was a potential commercial pressure for adopting solar.
Under this agreement, a backup liquefied natural gas (LNG) plant would also be built, capable of providing up to 30 megawatts on windless days, or when there is not enough wind to meet demand.
Minivan News raised concerns in an article published in April 2010 that according to figures published in a 2003 report by the US National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), North Malé Atoll had an annual average wind speed of 4.9 m/s (17.7 km/h), while a 2005 report by the American Wind Energy Association (AWEA) described the minimum average wind speed needed to run a utility-scale wind power plants as 6 m/s (21.6 km/h).
Mason described the contract as crafted with “more enthusiasm than technical involvement”, and noted that an LNG plant put out 92 percent of the emissions of a diesel plant “of the kind that STELCO already run very well.”
“A single cycle gas turbine of the kind described is very efficient but does not have the flexibility [required]. There is a technical challenge. We need to think about how we integrate things before we sublet the parts, so my instinct is that the contract will not be enacted in form presented.”
Speaking of the solar plan, now backed at least by data if not the finance, a senior government official remarked that the plan to turn to solar was “no longer froth. There’s a shot of espresso in the cappuccino now.”
The Maldives has meanwhile become the first country to crowdsource its renewable energy plan on the internet.
Forum topics in the comprehensive crowdsourcing project include solar and wind technology, energy storage, system control and demand management, novel technologies (including marine current and ocean thermal), biomass power generation, and finance.
Under each topic the Maldives appeals for expert assistance on several technical questions, around issues such as the use of solar panels in corrosive environments, the economics of tracking or fixed solar panel systems, and the viability of low velocity wind turbines.
Dr Abdul Majeed Abdul Bari was reappointed Minister of Islamic Affairs this morning, less than a week after he resigned from the position in the wake of the religious conservative Adhaalath party’s decision to sever its coalition agreement with the ruling Maldivian Democratic Party (MDP).
Dr Bari told Minivan News last week that he resigned “out of respect” for his party’s decision.
While both Dr Bari and State Islamic Minister Sheikh Hussain Rasheed Ahmed were asked to resign by the Adhaalath Party as they could “no longer represent the party in this government”, the latter issued a statement saying he would not resign unless he was asked by President Mohamed Nasheed.
Speaking to press at the Islamic Ministry today, Bari claimed that he accepted the post “as an individual” after “98 percent” of the people he consulted with – including religious scholars, businessmen and members of the general public – had advised him to do so.
Bari explained that he did not resign out of dissatisfaction with the government or difficulties in performing his duties, insisting that he accepted the post again “as a second opportunity to serve the nation.”
President Nasheed had welcomed Bari’s decision to accept the post while remaining a member of the Adhaalath Party, he said, insisting that he had no intention of resigning from the party.
Bari added that he expected Adhaalath Party to be “satisfied” that a member of the party would be filling the post of Islamic Minister.
Bari went on to criticise the party’s decision to sever the coalition agreement, claiming that a decision had been made before the consultation council held a meeting.
Moreover, he added, the meeting was held in violation of party rules and regulations as members were not informed of the items on the agenda. Dr Bari said he had argued against leaving the MDP-led coalition.
Adhaalath Party Spokesperson Sheikh Mohamed Shaheem Ali Saeed, who resigned as State Minister for Islamic Affairs last year, told Minivan News today that Dr Bari’s resignation was “a drama.”
“It was a drama he played so I would not like to comment on his action,” he said.
Adhaalath Party meanwhile issued a press statement today strongly condemning Dr Bari’s decision as going against “the spirit of the party’s constitution as well as the party’s decisions.”
“We also note that Dr Abdul Majeed Abdul Bari lied when he claimed to have assumed the post again after consulting with the party,” it reads, characterising the move as “lowly conduct” on the minister’s part.
The Criminal Court has sentenced a man to six months imprisonment after the police discovered two plastic sex toys inside his room.
The court identified the offender as Musthafa Hussein of Mahchangolhi Feyruge.
According to the Criminal Court, possession of objects shaped like sexual organs were prohibited under articles 4(c) and 13(c) the Contraband Act of 1975.
While article 4 of the Act states that pornographic material cannot be brought into the country, under article 13[c] images, sounds or videos depicting sexual activities as well as objects made to look like sexual organs shall be considered pornographic material for legal purposes.
Musthafa was therefore charged with possession of pornographic material.
The sex toys were discovered by police when they searched his room during a special operation on April 30, 2011.
The government expects the fiscal deficit to have fallen to a single digit at the end of the year, below the previous forecast of 11 percent of GDP, President Mohamed Nasheed said in his weekly radio address on Friday.
“The budget deficit as a percentage of GDP or national productivity has been estimated for next year at [budget] meetings with ministers and heads of government offices,” he said. “From that estimate we know that government expenditure has been substantially reduced in a number of different areas. For this year, we forecast a budget deficit of 11 percent. We have noted now that it has been reduced by three or four points.”
The government hoped that the fiscal deficit would be below 10 or “a single digit figure” when it is calculated at the end of the year, he said.
The budget deficit, which stood at just 1.9 percent of the economy in 2004, expanded to 7.3 percent in 2006 and ballooned to 23.9 percent in 2007, according to the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
The fiscal deficit exploded on the back of a 400 percent increase in the government’s wage bill between 2004 and 2009, with tremendous growth between 2007 and 2009. On paper, the government increased average salaries from Rf3000 to Rf11,000 and boosted the size of the civil service from 24,000 to 32,000 people – 11 percent of the total population of the country – doubling government spending from 35 percent of GDP to 60 percent from 2004 to 2006.
While preliminary figures had pegged the 2010 fiscal deficit at 17.75 percent, “financing information points to a deficit of around 20-21 percent of GDP”, down from 29 percent in 2009, the IMF noted in March this year.
“We see bringing the fiscal deficit down as the key macroeconomic priority for the Maldives,” the IMF’s Mission Chief to the Maldives, Rodrigo Cubero, told Minivan News at the time. “A large fiscal deficit pushes up interest rates, thereby undermining private investment and growth, and also drives up imports, putting pressure on the exchange rate and inflation, all of which hurts the Maldivian people, particularly the poor.”
“Further efforts are still needed to reduce the fiscal deficit. Those efforts should comprise further tax reforms as well as measures to reduce expenditure and to improve the channelling of social expenditures to the needy.”
Meanwhile in a booklet issued to media titled “the DRP’s response to the government’s economic nuisance package,” the main opposition Dhivehi Rayyithunge Party (DRP) strongly objected to a bill on fiscal responsibility currently before parliament.
The DRP also noted that provisions on imposing limits to government spending would only come into force after 2013.
“In the past three years, the MDP [Maldivian Democratic Party] government earned billions of rufiya by selling off state assets, facilitating business opportunities for their friends and introducing new taxes,” the DRP said. “Nonetheless, while the health sector, the education and overall standard of living has gone from bad to worse, it is unclear how the government spent the billions and billions of rufiya it received.”
President Mohamed Nasheed inaugurated a city council programme last week to plant trees in the congested capital city for “a greener, shadier, and more peaceful Male’.”
Speaking at a ceremony on Thursday, President Nasheed underscored the progress of the government’s flagship “Veshi Fahi Male'” housing programme, revealing plans to build more flats in an additional six areas of Male’.
Under the greenery programme meanwhile, the city council plans to plant 600 trees on both sides of the main thoroughfare Majeedhee Magu.
While the Indian High Commission has donated 10,000 trees, the council has also been receiving donations from islands, individuals and businesses.
Luxury Maldivian resort Soneva Fushi is currently hosting a three day ‘Slow Life’ symposium bringing together big names in business, climate science, film and renewable energy to come up with ways to address climate change.
Attendees at the Symposium include famous UK entrepreneur Richard Branson, founder of the Virgin Empire; actress Daryl Hannah, star of films including ‘Blade Runner’, ‘Kill Bill’ and ‘Splash’; Ed Norton, star of films including ‘Fight Club’ and ‘American History X’; Tim Smit, founder of the Eden Project; Maldives President Mohamed Nasheed; and an array of climate experts and scientists including Mark Lynas and Mike Mason.
Richard Branson
Branson described how six years ago former US Vice President and environmental advocate Al Gore arrived at his house “and made me realise I had to make changes to the way I was doing business in the own world.”
Among other initiatives, Branson described his creation of a “Carbon War Room” funding scientific work into both climate education and the development of a renewable alternative to jet fuel.
“Ethanol was not a good idea because it freezes at 15,000 feet,” Branson noted. “So we’re investigating alternatives such as algae, isobutanol and fuel created from eucalyptus trees,” he said, adding that Virgin would be making a significant announcement on the subject next week.
Big business had the ability and prerogative to break down market barriers to the development of low carbon technologies, he said. Inefficient shipping, for instance, wasted US$70 billion a year, and led him to create a website allocating ratings to the most efficient vessels and ports, that had attracted interest from large grocery chains.
Branson also outlined his US$25 million prize for the development of a commercial technology capable of removing carbon from the atmosphere, an idea he said was inspired by the 1714 prize offered for developing a means of measuring longitude on a ship, and had attracted thousands of innovative ideas.
President Mohamed Nasheed
Speaking at the symposium on Saturday, Nasheed said it was “very clear, that regardless of whether you are rich or poor, too much carbon will kill us.”
“For us, this is not just an environmental issue. We need to become carbon neutral even if there was no such thing as climate change, simply because it is more economically viable. We spend more than 14 percent of our GDP on fossil fuel energy, which is more than our education and health budget combined.”
The most important adaptation measure, Nasheed said, “is democracy. You have to have a responsive government to discuss this issue. When I do something people do not believe in, they shout at me. But they are not doing this on this issue.”
The government had reformed its economic system and introduced new taxes “so we can fend for ourselves. We cannot endlessly rely on the international community.”
Since last year’s symposium the government had launched its renewable energy investment plan, and contracted an international firm to process waste at Thilafushi, Nasheed said, as well as introduced a feed in tariff which would make generating solar “more profitable than a corner shop.”
“If you are buying electricity at 40 cents a kilowatt hour you can sell electricity to the state at 35 cents. Soneva Fushi is going to be able to produce electricity with solar at 15 cents. We will be able to finance households as a loan to pay back from savings they are making. If you do the sums in the Maldives it is really quite possible, and I’m confident that households will see the commercial viability.”
Ed Norton
Meanwhile Ed Norton, star of films including ‘Fight Club’ and ‘American History X’, linked sanitation and waste management to human development, noting that more people had cell phones than toilets. As a result, Norton said, 1.7 million people died yearly of preventable diarrheal diseases – 90 percent of them under the age of five.
“The World Health Organisation estimates that for every dollar spent on sanitation, $3-34 is returned to the economy,” he observed.
Ocean dumping of sewage was standard, he noted, while septic tanks could leak and contaminate groundwater. He proposed a greater focus on using waste water for fertiliser and water recycling, rather than thinking of it simply as a matter of waste disposal.
Jonathan Porritt
UK environmentalist Jonathan Porritt, founder of Forum for the Future, observed that just by attending the Symposium he had contributed four tons of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere.
He referred to a colleague who was “so overwhelmingly conscious” of his carbon footprint that he weighed his attendance at such events by “the gravity of the audience, the quality of his speech and the effectiveness in lobbying and networking.”
However, he noted that travel and tourism was, overall, a “force for good in an increasingly troubled world.”
“We live in a world where governments invest US$1.4 trillion a year in war. We live in a world where US$4 trillion is invested in the war against terror, a world were fundamentalism is rampant and aggressive nationalism is all over the place. Many countries taking a lead on the issue suffer from a deep sense of exhaustion. Against that backdrop, hands-on [tourism] is a way to bridge the divide,” Porritt said.
At the same time tourism was driven by the balance sheet, and that while there was a great deal of ecotourism initiatives much of it was “marketing, with no credibility.”
“There is a focus on green rather than sustainable tourism, and no real understanding of what it means,” he said. “There is a reluctance to engage on socio-economic issues.”
“Gaps in equity are widening – and the gap between the have and the have nots is widening. Even as tourism contributes economically, because of the gaps resentment about the impact of the industry is rising – especially in a country where access to land, water, beachfront, reef and biomass is being privileged to support growth of tourism industry rather than the interests of local people.”
Tourism, Porritt said, was a microcosm of the local economy, with high end tourism such as that in the Maldives attracting the wealthiest and most influential people.
“For the one percent of the population that control more than 30 percent of the net wealth in a country such as the United States, it is very easy to insulate one’s self from real world by traveling from high security offices to gated communities to privileged, luxury resorts. It is a bubble through which the real world rarely penetrates.”
A state of low carbon with high inequality was “not a judgement anyone should be comfortable with. We should be thinking not just about the need to mitigate carbon impact, but offsetting inequality. I think what we are doing should be from the perspective of social justice as much as low carbon.”
However, he noted, it was easier to educate a few billionaires than the entire population of a country such as the US, distracted from the issue by Xboxes and cable TV.
“Billionaires have a vested interest in keeping the [planet sustainable], because they have enough money enjoy the planet,” he suggested.
Tim Smit
Founder of the Eden Project in Cornwall, Tim Smit, spoke about the need to mobilise people by capturing their imagination – and the responsibility the Maldives has as a symbol of a united effort combating climate change.
“Author CS Lewis said that while science leads to truth, only imagination leads to meaning,” Smit said.
“We are used to talking to halls of middle aged men who want to be inspired. We read the books about affecting change and they have the same language, and it is really dull: paradigm shifts, centres of excellence, leading edge thinking, cutting edge thinking, and when they are very excited, bleeding edge thinking. We don’t write books about the impact of this thinking.”
Incredible things, Smit said, were “being done by the unreasonable.”
“The Maldives has captured the imagination, and the elected political elite are showing charisma and leadership on the issue [of climate change]. The danger is that we listen to too many middle aged white people, and miss the point. I see an incredible moment when the story of Maldives becomes the story of us all – but it needs to be delivered with a pirate grin that says f*** it, we’re going to do this thing. I hate idealists. I like unreasonable people who do things.”
There was, Smit said, a danger that the Maldives would lose sight of its goal, and “lose the moment when the Maldives could become the most important place in world. The goal is open but the moment will be gone, and suddenly the bright future is no longer there, just a job – and not a job in the spotlight.”
The Maldivian people needed to be given the independence to make their own decisions, such as installing solar, and given control so that they knew the impact of flipping the light switch.
“Trust in the people of the Maldives to get excited of a picture of the Maldives reborn,” Smit suggested.
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