Nasheed to lecture on climate change at Queen Mary, UL

Former President Mohamed Nasheed will give a lecture highlighting the obstacles Maldives faces and the role of a nation’s government in handling the impact of climate change, at the QMUL (Queen Mary, University of London).

Nasheed, who was granted asylum by Britain after a 13-year jail sentence, will give his lecture on February 15th, alongside Dr. Simon Carr, a senior lecturer at the University, on the topic; ‘low carbon development strategy and the need for good governance in climate change’.

The opposition leader has been fervently vocal about the necessity of adapting to climate change and dropping carbon emission for every Maldivian’s survival, the nation’s average height above sea level is four feet - the highest point lying at about eight feet.

In one of his first and more striking attempts to bring the issue to light was when he and his cabinet donned scuba gear and held a cabinet meeting under water in October of 2009.

“Unless people locally decide that there is gravity in the issue, it’s not going to be easy for us to come up with an international agreement” Nasheed told the Huffington Post in 2014 when asked where global reforms advocating for carbon neutrality should start.

Earlier, in January of 2017, Nasheed had flown to the United States to sit in with environmentalist and former President ‘Al’ Gore at a screening of An Inconvenient Sequel – a film by Gore, and The New Climate’s ‘the power of story’ panel.