Some may call it a desperate publicity stunt, others a brilliant political demonstration. A few weeks ago, TakePart’s Danny Jensen wrote about Maldives President Mohamed Nasheed’s plan to hold the world’s first underwater cabinet meeting. That meeting, which took place last Friday, did manage to get the media’s and world’s attention. The objective was to underscore the urgency surrounding the threat climate change is already posing to the low-lying chain of islands.

Donning full scuba gear, the cabinet conducted the meeting 20 meters under water, whilst sitting at desks surrounded by coral reefs. They communicated via hand signals - one of those signals was “SOS.” Cabinet members took weeks of scuba diving lessons in order to pull it off.

Nasheed chose this unorthodox method in time for COP15, or the United Nations Climate Change Conference 2009, which takes place in December in Copenhagen. He has been in the news often since last November when he announced a plan to relocate all 300,000+ Maldivians to the safety of other countries, suggesting Sri Lanka, India and Australia.

To make the plan work, the Maldives would have imposed a green tax on tourists to start a sovereign wealth fund in order to buy a new country, or part of an existing one. His newer plan is for the Maldives to be the first country to go completely carbon neutral by 2020. Nasheed reckons that if a country as poor as his own can accomplish this challenge, there is no reason wealthy world powers cannot.

The Maldives is an archipelago of 1,190 islands (only two hundred of which are inhabited) that stretch for 90,000 square kilometers across the Indian Ocean. The average elevation is only four feet, making it the lowest-lying country on the planet and, consequently, one of the most vulnerable to climate change. And although the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change predicts rising sea levels on average of up to about 23 inches by the year 2100, newer studies, including the recent study predicting the melting of the Arctic ice cap at 20-30 years, suggest that sea level may rise much more quickly than expected.