Indian Ocean: The Maldives Islands

Imagine waking up to a flooded house. Your home, your life, changed over night. This fear is a prominent and existent fear for the natives of the Marshall Islands. “In the heart of the Pacific Ocean halfway between Hawaii and Australia lies one of the most remote inhabited places on the planet. The Republic of the Marshall Islands (RMI) consists of 29 coral atolls comprising 1,156 individual islands and islets, distributed across 750,000 square miles of tropical ocean in two nearly parallel chains” (Pacheco). With climate change becoming a bigger issue and ocean levels rising, the Marshallese are slowly watching their homes, passed loved ones, and even agriculture be wiped away by the waves that are sinking their islands. Climate change has

The rise of sea levels are projected to increase warmer waters from one and a half to two degrees in Central North Pacific in 2050, 1.9 to 2.6 degrees in Northern Islands, and also two to five degrees in the Caribbean at the end of this century. This rise of temperature decreases the life of ecosystems in the ocean and resulting in less freshwater for

Global Warming could cause the sea to expand and rise faster than the corals could fortify themselves against it and Tuvalu could disappear beneath the waves.

According to SIDS Accelerated Modalities of Action (SAMOA) Pathway "sea-level rise and other adverse impacts of climate change continue to pose a significant risk to Small Island Developing States and their efforts to achieve sustainable development and, for many, represent the

“Global warming” is a direct result of gases emitted into the atmosphere. These emissions will eventually cause such high levels of greenhouse gases in the lower atmosphere that the entire world will notice the side effects of this resulting climate change. This phenomenon will eventually cause sea levels to rise around islands, such as Haiti, where the displacement of valuable land is already most noticeable in coastal areas. This process is called rise tide, and most scientists believe that it happens because of the release of carbon dioxide into the air through the conversion of crude oil, coal, and natural gas. Some scientists even believe that in the years to come, some of the islands might need to be evacuated due to the “rise tide” phenomenon. Such a possibility exists in Haiti where the sea seeps into the land and reduces its size. An island like Haiti is losing more land daily and is experiencing a more rapid depletion of acreage because of “Rise Tide” than from any other natural disasters.

Tuvalu, a small island with a population of less than 11,000, is on it’s way to sinking. The island has been struggling to keep it’s inhabitants safe from it’s rising waters for many years now, but it had gotten to the point where their plight can no longer be ignored. With the climate1 continuously on the rise due to high CO2 2

1-4. What possible impact might occur with a change in sea level (be sure to define sea level in your answer)?

Warmer oceans are leading to increased coral bleaching and disease outbreaks and changing distribution of tuna fisheries. Freshwater supplies will become more limited on many islands. Coastal flooding and erosion will increase. Mounting threats to food and water security, infrastructure, health, and safety are expected to lead to increasing human migration.

The rising sea level in Miami has giving bad impacts to the people of the city mainly during the coming of high spring and autumn tides. When there is very strong wind, the storm surge will be produced as the wind push water to the inland. This occurrence causes the tidal surges overflow the Florida coast and hit the Miami Beach’s west coast. Then, it went

The rising sea levels are associated with almost every region of the U.S., besides those on tectonic plates or landlocked regions. According to the report, most regions have a large majority of their gross domestic product, GDP, and population living in costal counties. This is a problem for areas like the South East which has thirty six percent of it’s inhabitants living on the coast and thirty three percent of its GDP coming from its coasts. “In Florida, because of the porous limestone on which the major southern cities are built, even modest sea level rise comes at a significant economic cost.”1 Within the next half a century it reasonable to assume, based on the evidence from the report, that between fifteen and twenty three billion dollars of existing property in the South East will be submerged by the rising sea levels. Furthermore, there is a “1-in-100 chance that more than $682 billion in property will

Within the past year a huge catastrophe has happened in the Maldivian reef. Due to increasing temperatures the colorful and beautiful reefs have turned gray and dead. This is not only happening here though, it is a world-wide problem. Coral reefs support a quarter of all marine species as well has a half a billion people. In the last thirty years the world has lost half of them. Losing our coral reefs is not a problem that we need to worry about one hundred years from now it is a problem the world is facing today.

The Indian Ocean wave devastated a great many miles of coastline and even submerged whole islands forever. The island nation Maldives rises just a couple of feet above ocean level, however it is generally safeguarded by distant coral reefs. All things considered, the wave cleared over the reefs

·     The gradual sinking of coastal land (since the height of the land and the sea are both changing, we use "relative sea level rise" to describe the rise of the ocean compared to the height of land in a particular location). ·     Efforts to reduce erosion that have backfired and instead increased it. ·     Global warming, which is expected to accelerate the rise in sea level. The upshot is a threat to beaches and coastal communities around the world. At stake is far more than a movie mogul's mansion. New Orleans, now several feet below sea level, would face a greater threat of annihilation. Island nations across the Pacific Ocean could disappear beneath the waves. Millions of Bangladeshis, already exposed to typhoons that drown hundreds of thousands at a time, would have to find new homes in one of the Earth's most crowded nations. The predictions growing out of global warming studies are unsettling. Much of Long Island's extensive barrier beach, including not just the homes of the rich and famous in the Hamptons, but also public treasures like the vastly popular park at Jones Beach, would be submerged if sea levels rise by three feet, according to a projection by the National Environmental Trust, a Washington, DC, advocacy group. A three-foot rise over the next 50 to 100 years is possible, but extremely unlikely, according to current predictions. Coastal

Many Island nations in the Pacific Ocean are being threatened by climate change. These tropical islands could be underwater over the next few years if the effects of climate change aren’t numbed, or protection programs aren’t put in place. The islands that will be affected are low lying and very flat, this means that if there is a small rise in sea level it has the potential to cover the entire Island in water. Many residents of these islands nations have nowhere to go, as the islands surrounding them are also at risk of going underwater. Climate change is defined as a “long term shift in weather conditions identified by changes in temperature, precipitation, winds, and other indicators”, this conveys that there are many different indicators that can be deemed climate change other than temperature. Despite this, a rising temperature is the main factor affecting low lying island nations. This is because the rising temperatures are melting the polar ice caps. The melting of this enormous quantity of ice results in rising sea levels, putting many island nations at risk of their entire country being submerged by the ocean.

As another country that is just as endangered, Maldives is famous for its sinking land due to sea levels rising and glaciers melting from global warming. Some scientists have even hypothesized that 77% of Maldives will be gone by the end of the century, based the pace of the sea levels rising 0.8-1.6 millimeters every year around the Maldives. However, the sea levels rising isn’t Maldives’ only environmental problem, every while or so, there will be a flood caused by storm surges, and a lack of freshwater due to global warming and climate change; whilst the Maldivian government is trying to solve the long-term problem of sea levels rising they still need to work out their short-term problems such as flooding, pressurizing the government. As one of the first countries to realize the danger of sea levels rising, the Maldives government has taken a lot of action to slow down global warming. After the drastic floods of 1987, the president of Maldives — Gayoom has built a wall around Male (the capital city of Maldives) which has decreases the vulnerability of the city, yet as the population increases, the city has gotten more and more compact and unattractive. To solve the densely-populated problem and make the