By Alex Arnall, University of Reading

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

As UN climate conference COP26 approaches, vulnerable nations are rightly highlighting how they are threatened by climate change. One such nation is the Maldives, for whose inhabitants sea level rise could cause permanent devastation.

The Maldives has become emblematic of the challenges that sea level rise will bring to many societies around the world. The former president of the Maldives, Mohamed Nasheed, spoke on behalf of almost 50 climate-vulnerable countries when he stated that those living in threatened coastal areas and islands “are paying with our lives for the carbon someone else emitted”.

Yet while sea level rise is a serious threat, people in the Maldives report facing additional, more pressing environmental problems. These problems, while linked to climate change, are mainly related to coastal development…