According to The Telegraph, the President of the Maldive Islands, Mohammed Nasheed, has announced plans to tax tourists $3 (£1.80) per day that they stay there in order provide additional funding for plans to counteract the effects of climate change.

The Maldives featured in Smart Traveller’s list of ten tourist destinations that could be destroyed by the effects of climate change, published in May 2009. In this post, we described how the islands could be submerged as a result of rising sea levels.

The Telegraph states that President Nasheed plans to make the Maldives the first carbon-neutral country in the world within the next ten years, but if the effects of climate change can not be counteracted and the islands begin to be submerged, the climate change fund will be used to rehome residents elsewhere and set up a “new” Maldives.