According to the Environmental Protection Agency, global sea levels have risen by about 7.5 inches since 1870. This impacts some countries more severely than others. Island countries, such as the Maldives, Kiribati, Palau, Micronesia and Seychelles are the weakest link in the chain with respect to climate change and the risk of being submerged by rising sea levels. These island nations are low-lying, and their location above the sea is approximately 1-3 meters, indicating that they are flood-prone, and eventualities such as storms can cause more damage than in high-land nations—the United States and Belarus, for example.

The Maldives attracts particular attention because it is the most disappearance-prone island on the planet; however, none of the aforementioned islands represent an outlier as most of them are facing identical, environmental security threats—submersion due to rise of sea level, erosion, and displacement of local populations.  In order to save island countries from vanishing, the world community must play a pivotal role in the reduction of Co2 emissions by taking an incisive approach toward the ongoing threat of climate change.

Island countries are the most vulnerable nations in the world to these natural hazards. In the case of the Maldives, it is the most scattered country on the planet, with a highly dispersed population. The Maldives—consisting of over 1,100 islands— is also the lowest-lying nation in the world, averaging 1.3 meters above sea level. According to its former President Mohamed Nasheed, the Maldives would submerge with a 3-feet sea level rise, which is all it would take to make the islands inhabitable for humans. Nasheed explained that “his people obviously want to remain on the islands, but moving was an eventuality his government had to plan for.”

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