(M. Montoya / 19-10-09)  The gesture of the Government of Maldives has been round the world and reactivates union appeals to cope with the devastation that is going to be due to global warming.

A Council of Ministers that has been more pantomime than a workshop, which had only one goal: to shake the international opinion. The unusual session of government was with diving suits and air bottles in Girifushi Island, 35 miles far from Male, capital of the Maldives, the country of coral reefs in the Indian Ocean.

Six meters deep, and during 30 minutes at least, the President and his Ministers discussed about danger of global warming that affects directly to this picturesque archipelago integrated of near 1,200 islands.

According to the press office of the government, 11 of the 14 ministers that are members of the government of the Maldives assisted the meeting. Two could not assist because of health problems, and the third one was in Europe in committee work.

Members of the government assisted the required dive course during two weeks before the “submarine cabinet”. All of them passed the course PADI and with the current licence they did some practices about how to stay in the meeting room in the bottom of the sea.

The submarine session of the government was through gestures and tablets for writing messages and at the end of the meeting, the Maldivian government appealed to the international community about the risk that the country will disappear as a result of global warming.

Most of the islands in the archipelago are about 1.5 meters on the sea, and, according to scientific forecasts, in 2100 due to global warning, ocean waters will have risen between 18 and 59 centimetres, plunging much of this area.

Experts indicate that the 310,000 inhabitants in the Maldives can be the first environmental refugees in the planet, and that it is about time to take actions to save this tourist paradise of a climate apocalypse.

As first step, ministers signed their diving suits, which will be sold at auction whose funds will be used to finance programs for the protection and conservation of coral reefs in the Maldives.