A ray of hope from the Maldives

It is a commonly held view that it is economically stupid to persist with fossil fuels as if they are the only game in town. But, until last week, I have never worked with a head of state who shares this same view and actually does something about it.

President Mohamed Nasheed of the Maldives spent 45 minutes installing PV solar panels on the roof of his official residence (Mulee Agee) last week, kicking off a Global Work Party for the climate. Serendipitously, this followed the announcement three days prior that the US President Barack Obama will put solar PV and hot water on the roof of the White House, now that Rahm Emmanual has left the building and taken his antediluvian version of progressive politics with him.

In the Maldives' tiny capital city island, Malé, the equatorial sun is intense even by 8am. And as the President got to work on the solar installation, most of the media and government onlookers moved across the courtyard, to watch from under the shade of the grand old trees.

President Nasheed is an amazing man. He was imprisoned many times and tortured twice by the regime during the Maldive's struggle for democracy. Yesterday he was working himself to a sweat on the roof of Mulee Aage, moving the PV panels around and securing them in place.

While the President worked away with the team from Sungevity (who managed the project), I spoke with Mr Mohamed Aslam, the Minister of Environment. Mr Alsam asked what I thought of the UN's climate negotiations. I suggested that the Maldives is best to continue with a pragmatic approach, focusing on its own needs and capacity for clean energy transition, and not waiting around for a global consensus on action.

The Republic of the Maldives made a formal commitment to cut its net emissions by 100 per cent by 2020 under the UN's Copenhagen Accord. This is the strongest pledge by any country, setting the gold standard for clean energy transition. My understanding is that offsetting would only be used for unavoidable emissions such as flights to the country. This sets the Maldives above the moral low-ground of the OECD countries, who are mostly planning to use emissions trading to buy carbon indulgences from the developing world.

Currently, the Maldives is tragically addicted to fossil fuels. It is one of the most oil-vulnerable nations in Asia. Imported oil provides the fuel source for electricity generation, boats and land vehicles and the country has no strategic reserve. If the oil price spikes, the electricity price follows and for the poorest people, the lights go out or the boats do not run.

The cost and future price uncertainty of oil makes it a brake on development here. Renewable energy and energy conservation sectors will diversify the economy, increasing employment and stability.

In March this year, the government of the Maldives, La Compagnie Benjamin de Rothschild and BeCitizen signed a strategic partnership agreement to develop the 2020 pledge into an action plan. BeCitizen is a strategic and environmental finance company and is majority-owned by La Compagnie Benjamin de Rothschild. Australia has contributed $A500,000 towards the development of the plan via a trust fund at the World Bank and other nations and the EU are also supporting the work.

The action plan will include an audit of emissions across all sectors of the economy. It will also be broken down into policies that will bring about integrated reforms. And it will, I believe, investigate proven technology, such as PV, and emerging cleantech, such as harvesting energy from the steep ocean thermocline around the Maldives.

The Maldives has not chosen a financing option for the plan but is in discussions with multilateral development banks as well as providers of private capital. I told Minister Aslam that I think this political and economic pragmatism is true leadership. The World Bank, IMF and WTO have been spoilers of clean energy transition for 22 years, since the hard negotiations began for the UNFCCC. More than any other part of the UN system, the Bretton Woods institutions are captive to broken beliefs about energy economics.

If the Maldives government approaches the financing of its carbon neutral transformation with the same hands-on enthusiasm that President Nasheed showed on his roof, it can finance with independent, private capital. The world's most climate-vulnerable nation can make a quantum leap out of oil dependency and economic dependency at the same time. Solar power for the Maldives means profit, security and development. As far as I can tell, the Maldives is creating its own brand of ecological-economic rationalism and that is cause for hope.

Dan Cass is a lobbyist and strategy consultant.