President Dr Mohamed Waheed has said that it was our moral obligation as a global community to adapt and build resilience plans for extreme weather events. The President made this remark while speaking at the inauguration of the workshop held for the tourism sector on Building Partnership for Climate Change Adaptation.
At the function held at Bandos Island Resort this morning, the President urged participants of the workshop to consider the people and local residents of the country, and not only tourists, when deliberating on the climate change issues.
In his speech, the President underlined that the Maldivian people have done the least to contribute to climate change.
“The lack of action on adaptation not only risks putting prosperity out of reach of our people, it threatens to roll back decades of sustainable development, economic and resilience of our islands”, said the President.
Noting that climate change adaptation was both a practical need and a moral imperative, President Waheed said that it was mainstreamed and integrated into the policy and planning process of tourism development. He said that there was a need to establish and implement climate-smart planning and investment practices in the tourism sector.
The President pointed out that the cost of taking adaptation action now would be much less than the cost of dealing with the consequences later. He also said that sustainability of the Maldives’ tourism industry depended both on the ability to adapt the natural beauty of the surroundings, and to effectively manage natural disasters induced by climate change.
