Vice President Faisal Naseem has urged world leaders to grasp the urgency and seriousness that climate change deserves.

He said this while speaking at the high-level roundtable on "Climate Change and Sustainability of Vulnerable Communities," held as part of the 2022 United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP27) in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt.

As such, addressing the debate, VP Naseem stressed on the significance of grasping the urgency and seriousness encompassing climate change, in order to protect the planet's most vulnerable places and communities.

The Maldivian Vice President stressed that the globe’s most vulnerable countries are on the verge of the climate crisis and at greater risk of losing lives and livelihoods, adding that the narrative needs to be changed.

Highlighting the recent flooding in Pakistan that affected 33 million people and destroyed 1.7 million homes, the vice president warned that similar events would likely become more frequent as global temperatures continue to rise.

With this, he noted that food and water security, human health, and biodiversity will be drastically affected even in a 1.5-degree world and shed light on the need to address such transboundary issues with a global response.

VP Naseem stressed on the urgency to drastically scale up finance and action, as loss and damage are already a reality for many countries and will become more so the slower action is taken in mitigation and adaptation.

He said that one very troubling example for Maldives concerns coral reefs, the source of so much of the archipelago nation’s culture and livelihood.

VP Naseem went on to cite predictions by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) that global warming of 1.5°C will result in the disappearance of between 70 and 90 percent of coral reefs, adding that it will have damaging effects on the Maldives in terms of jobs, tourism, fisheries, and the loss of entire ecosystems.

Prior to joining the debate, VP Naseem visited the pavilions at the Sharm El-Sheikh International Convention Center and met with a Maldivian student from Hiriya School who was attending COP27.