In memory of the late Swedish Foreign Minister Anna Lindh, who was tragically stabbed to death in 2003, every year a person who works for human rights is awarded.
Last week the Anna Lindh Memorial Fund announced that this years’ prize will go to the president of the Maldives, Mohamed Nasheed. Nasheed, who is the first democratically elected president of the country, receives the prize for the Maldives’ “great efforts to put people and their human rights at the heart of the debate on climate change.” The prize ceremony will be held on 16 June in Stockholm.
Looking for new land
The islands that the Maldives consist of has an average elevation of not much more than one meter over sea level, which means that even with moderate sea level rises following climate change, the entire country can be wiped off the map within this century.
Mohamed Nasheed has earlier announced his goal that the Maldives will be the first zero carbon economy in the world, going carbon neutral in a decade, but he has also said that he is looking for a new homeland abroad for the about 380 000 inhabitants of the Maldives, since the small country does not have the power to curb climate change unless the rest of the world follows.
– I and the Anna Lindh Memorial Fund with me are pleased that President Nasheed accepted this prize at a time when the world community must understand and draw conclusions from the effects of climate change. President Nasheed and the Maldivian people show us that climate change is an issue of existential dimension,” said Jan Eliasson, Chairman of the Anna Lindh Memorial Fund.
More than 100 percent
Also doing a great work to lift global equality aspects of climate change and sustainability is Stockholm Environment Institute, SEI. Among other things, they have researched the Greenhouse Development Rights, a framework to reduce CO2-emissions globally in a way that allows poorer countries to develop and puts a bigger responsibility on richer countries who have large historical emissions. In their latest calculations they came to the conclusion that Sweden’s reductions of greenhouse gas emissions should amount to around 120 percent – making about 40 percent of the reductions in Sweden and the rest in less developed countries.
I will get back to SEI in later blog posts. In the meantime I leave you with a message from the Maldivian president and Anna Lindh Prize winner, Mohamad Nasheed:
Message from the President of the Maldives from Age of Stupid on Vimeo.
