Mohamed Nasheed: Island President & “Global President”

 

The campaign to combat climate change often feels like a David vs. Goliath struggle, with activists attempting to counter the influence of entrenched and moneyed interests and prod recalcitrant governments to action. But this abstraction is made clearer in a new documentary focused on the former President of the Maldives called The Island President. President Mohamed Nasheed, known as “Anni” to his supporters, is a man of small stature governing a tiny archipelago in the Indian Ocean who has emerged as a towering figure in the global campaign to reduce carbon emissions and mitigate the effects of climate change. Given unprecedented access to a sitting head of state, the filmmakers followed President Nasheed and his advisers as they prepared for and negotiated at the 2009 Copenhagen Summit. What the audience gets is a story that is deeply personal yet embedded within the wider frames of global governance, democracy, and anthropogenic climate change.

Through the course of the film, Nasheed transitions seamlessly from pro-democracy activist fighting for reform in the Maldives to that country’s first democratically-elected leader in modern times fighting against climate change on the global stage. With democratization toppling dictatorships worldwide—from the collapse of the East Bloc and the fall of Latin American juntas in the 1980s and 1990s to the Arab Spring today—it seems natural that the next battle for democratic accountability is on the global stage. In 2008, the Maldives produced a paltry 980,000 metric tons of carbon emissions (far less than 0.01% of the world total) yet it is already suffering from rising seas brought on by climate change. If emissions continue to rise, then this low-lying archipelago (highest point: 2.3 meters above sea level) will be completely submerged by the end of the 21^st century

. This dilemma of interdependence is clearly stated by Nasheed in the film, “it won’t be any good to have a democracy if we don’t have a country.”

The Island President reveals Nasheed as having the soul of a dissident; though they may have vastly different backgrounds, I am reminded of insurgent trade unionists Lech Walesa and Lula da Silva

or the poet Vaclav Havel . Once they achieved high office, their unorthodoxy and tendency to speak truth to power merely ascended up the rungs with them. When I spoke with the director of the film, Jon Shenk, he noted that these international climate summits are the “politics of the playground” and Nasheed directly challenged the standard deadlock derived from competing interests between the developed and developing nations. Instead, he appealed directly to the two blocs and their de facto leaders, the United States and China, to try and reach a deal that could be the framework for future emissions cuts. The behind-the-scenes view at the summit helps to counter the view at the time among progressives that Copenhagen was a complete failure .

In addition to the bold agenda of the Maldivian delegation, part of what made even a modest amount of progress the Copenhagen summit possible was the Obama administration’s willingness to make a deal. This stands in stark contrast the previous presidential administration, but President Obama’s environmental record

has been disappointing for environmentalists hoping for significant change. Though the U.S. has some powerful voices for advocating for robust and reasonable environmental policy, like Al Gore, James Hansen, and Bill McKibben, none have the moral force behind them that Mohamed Nasheed does. As an unfortunate epilogue to the film, Nasheed was ousted from the presidency and replaced by his vice-president in a coup in February. Despite this, Jon Shenk noted that he seemed unfazed by this development, remaining upbeat and focused on the climate struggle. In the film, I was struck by a scene where Nasheed spoke at a rally in Copenhagen before the summit opened; as he entered the room, some activists unfurled a banner that read “You Are Our Global President.” If anyone in our contemporary world deserves such a position, it might well be Mohamed Nasheed.

The Island President is playing now at Film Forum

FAXLESS payday loans

in New York City and at Embarcadero Center Cinema in San Francisco and will be opening in other cities across the country this spring.