THE MALDIVES/INDIA
Mr Sustainability, Mr Friendship
Honouring his efforts to promote sustainable development practices and climate-change awareness, President Maumoon Abdul Gayoom was recently awarded the Sustainable Development Leadership Award for 2008 by The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI) of India. The prestigious award was presented to the four-decade president by Manmohan Singh at the Delhi Sustainable Development Summit 2008, on 7 February.
Expressing his deep appreciation for the recognition, President Gayoom told those gathered at the Summit – which included a host of Scandinavian prime ministers, including from Finland, Denmark, Norway and Iceland – that he was dedicating his award to the people of the Maldives, which he reiterated was among the world's countries most in danger from climate change. (Though, it should be said, observers have recently noted a small change in this rhetoric, after the Maldives proved not to include the world's first inhabited islands to be flooded due to rising sea levels, as that dubious distinction is now reserved for an island in the Bangladeshi Sundarban.)
President Gayoom subsequent travelled to Sri Lanka, where he was awarded that country's highest national honour, the Mithra Vibushana, thereby becoming the first foreign head of state to receive the award. At the ceremony, Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapakse said that the president was receiving the award for having fostered "exceptional friendship and solidarity" between the peoples of the Maldives and Sri Lanka.
The following day, the two presidents agreed on a host of new bilateral initiatives, including in tourism, the environment and fighting 'terrorism'. The last, observers noted, could particularly gladden President Gayoom's heart, as key figures within the Maldivian political opposition have long been based in Sri Lanka.