The Island President

What do you do when the country you are in charge of is disappearing beneath the waves? This is the dilemma that faces The Island President.

It's the Maldives, and this is President Mohammad Nasheed. He took over from 30 year dictator Gayoom... whom I wonder if he took off because he saw the climate issues coming and wanted nothing to do with it, so allowed a 'free election' and basically said 'you deal with it'. Which President Nasheed had to. And the big event coming up (which is the focus of the movie) is the Copenhagen talk in 2009 and Nasheed is trying to get the governments to agree to changes, without which the Maldives will cease to exist.

What I noted with interest was the people he met with. Here he is, the President of an island nation, and in other countries he is meeting with ministers and radio hosts. Yeah, that's the lot of power he's swinging here.

He tries, tries to get all the small island nations together, tries to ask for reasonable agreements... and at the end comes away with a 'this is a note we agree is a note that has nice ideas'... about as binding as anything the United Nations seem to be involved with. When facing up against China, America, India... none of whom have the slightest interest in caring about the climate change situation in other countries... you ain't going to get very far, and just getting the 'that's a note' agreement nearly ruined everything.

And then, in the text at the end, President Nasheed isn't even in power any more... and looking over the wiki page... yep, that chain of islands is on a countdown to going bye-bye...



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