Click to play videoMale (Maldives): The new president of the Maldives wants to relocate his entire country. Much of Male, capital of the Maldives, was flooded following the 2004 tsunami.
Mohamed "Anni" Nasheed, a former political prisoner, was sworn in Tuesday after he unseated Asia's longest-serving leader in the country's first multi-party elections two weeks ago. He inherits an island nation with several problems.
Foremost among them: The very likely possibility that the Maldives will sink under water if the current pace of climate change keeps raising sea levels.
The Maldives is an archipelago of almost 1,200 coral islands located south-southwest of India. Most of the islands lie just 4.9 feet (1.5 meters) above sea level.
The United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has forecast a rise in sea levels of at least 7.1 inches (18 cm) by the end of the century.
The island was badly hit by the December 2004 tsunami, which killed an estimated 2,73,800 people and left thousands missing across Asia and Africa.
In the Maldives itself, at least 82 people were killed and 26 unaccounted for from a population just over 2.7 lakh, according to the Maldives Disaster Management Center. Sixty-nine islands were completely flooded and a further 30 islands half flooded.
The capital of Male was also flooded, although sea walls protected it from further devastation. The government has calculated that creating a similar barrier around the rest of the country would cost too much.
And so the tourist nation, which has white sandy beaches that lure well-heed Westerners, wants to set aside some of the billion dollars a year it receives from tourism and spend that money on buying a new homeland.
"We will invest in land," Nasheed said. "We do not want to end up in refugee tents if the worst happens."
Nasheed's government has said that it has broached the idea with several countries and found them to be "receptive."
Land owned by Sri Lanka and India are possibilities because the countries have similar cultures, cuisine and climate as the Maldives. Australia is also being considered because of the vast unoccupied land it owns.
Climate change is not the only challenge the new president will have to tackle, though. Other thorny issues include rising unemployment, corruption and a staggering drug epidemic.
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