The UN forecasts that seas are likely to rise as much as 59cm by the end of this century due to global warming. Most parts of the Maldives are barely 1.5cm above sea level and with even a small rise in levels would mean that large parts of the archipelago could be inundated.

The president of the Republic of Maldives, Mohamed Nasheed, plans to divert a portion of the country’s billion-dollar annual tourist revenue into buying land as an insurance against climate change.

This holiday paradise in the Indian Ocean is home for more than 300,000 islanders with 100,000 crammed into two square kilometers in the world’s most densely populated town of Male. “We can do nothing to stop climate change on our own and so we have to buy land elsewhere,” said Nasheed.

Eighty percent of the country’s 1200 islands are less than 1m above sea level with about 200  being inhabited. He indicated that Sri Lanka and India were possibilities as cultures, cuisines and climate were similar, with Australia as an option due to the large areas of uninhabited land. “We do not want to leave the Maldives, but we also do not want to be climate refugees living in tents for decades”, he said.

Scott Leckie, director of Displacement Solutions, a Swiss based refugee consultancy, cautioned, “We don’t know where they plan to buy this land or whether they have thought it through. Are they actually asking to re-establish the Maldives elsewhere?”

In October a formal request was made by Australia’s Green party for the country to grant special visas to Tuvalan climate change refugees but the request was denied.

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