Maldives on the frontline

NALAKA Gunawardene and VINDANA Ariyawansa

The Indian Ocean archipelago of the Maldives is the smallest country in Asia – it packs 350,000 people into a land area of 298 square kilometres. With no place more than six feet above the sea, it is on the frontline of climate change impact. As the polar ice melts and sea levels rise, these and other low-lying islands will be the first to go under water. Coastal erosion, salt intrusion and extreme weather events will make many islands uninhabitable much sooner.

The Maldives has been at the forefront of drawing international attention to the plight of small developing countries, and especially low lying island states, to climate change. Today’s Wiz Quiz starts with some questions on our South Asian neighbour.

1 A new 90-minute long international documentary is being released in August 2011 that profiles the local and global level climate change activism by President Mohamed Nasheed of the Maldives. Made by Actual Films in the US, the film is introduced as one that ‘lifts the issue of global warming out of the theoretical and into the personal’.

The South Asian nation is at high risk as sea levels rise due to global warming. President Nasheed is doing all he can to prevent this looming disaster by trying to convince world leaders to halt global warming.

The filmmakers received exclusive access to follow President Nasheed as he prepared over several months for the 2009 Copenhagen Climate Summit in December that year. What is this film titled?

2 International climate advocacy was started by the former President of the Maldives, who ruled from 1978 to 2008. Addressing the UN General Assembly and other high level meetings in 1987, he first described how unprecedented waves had caused widespread destruction in the Maldives.

He kept climate change on the agenda at international and inter-governmental meetings for two decades. Who is he?

3 The Maldives is made up of 1,192 coral islands that are grouped into 26 atolls. An atoll is a coral island (or islands) that encircles a lagoon partially or completely.

The 26 atolls are spread in equatorial Indian Ocean in a north-south direction, are spread over roughly 90,000 square km, which makes it one of the most dispersed countries in the world.

The atolls are composed of live coral reefs and sand bars, all located on top of a submarine ridge some 960 km long that rises from the bottom of the Indian Ocean. In fact, the very word atoll has been derived from the Maldivians’ Dhivehi language. What is the original term in Dhivehi?

4 Juno was an ancient Roman goddess, said to be the protector and special counsellor of the state. She is a daughter of Saturn and sister (but also the wife) of the chief god Jupiter and the mother of Mars and Vulcan.

Juno is also the name of an unmanned, advanced spacecraft that NASA launched on August 5, 2001 which is now on its way to a planet in the solar system. After a five-year-long journey, it will reach and orbit that planet in July 2016 to study it to understand its origin and evolution. Which planet?

5 Rise of the Planet of the Apes is a new science fiction film that was released in the US and Canada on 5 August 2011. Directed by Rupert Wyatt, it is a reboot of the Planet of the Apes film series that will act as a foundation with an ‘origins’ story for a new film series.

Planet of the Apes has become a media franchise with seven feature films, a television series and comic books. The series began with the 1968 film Planet of the Apes, which was based on the 1963 French novel La Planète des singes. Name the 20th Century French novelist who wrote it.

6 The original Planet of the Apes movie in 1968 tells the story of an astronaut crew who crash land on a strange planet in the distant future and find a society where apes have evolved into creatures with human-like intelligence and speech.

On that planet, humans are mute creatures dominated by the apes. The film, starring Charlton Heston, Roddy McDowall, Kim Hunter, Maurice Evans, James Whitmore, James Daly and Linda Harrison, was a commercial success.

In 2001, it was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant”. Who directed the original film?

7 A well known promoter of space travel and a chronicler of the early years of space travel, wrote these words in 1975: “I have shaken the hands of the first man to orbit the earth, the first man to step out into space, and the first to walk upon the Moon.

In the long perspective of history, it will not matter that two of them were Russian, and one was American.” Whose words are these?

8 August 20 was the 87th birth anniversary of the late Dr Ray Wijewardene, the illustrious Sri Lankan engineer and inventor who was a world authority on tropical farming systems.

He studied three branches of engineering - aeronautical, mechanical and agricultural - at Cambridge University, UK. In 1955, he designed the world’s first two-wheeled, hand tractor to help small farmers in the tropics to mechanise their farm work, which was marketed worldwide in the 1960s and 1970s by a British company.

What was the name given to that tractor? (He later considered it a mistake and devoted the rest of his life to promote conservation farming that was close to Nature.)

9 The Axis powers (also known as the Axis alliance, Axis nations, Axis countries) was an alignment of three ambitious countries – two European and one Asian – during the mid-20th Century that fought World War II against the Allies forces. Which three countries were involved?

10 Artistes associated with the creation of the Sinhala feature film Ahasin Polowata (White Flowers for the Dead, 1978) were recently felicitated at a meeting in Colombo.

The film, starring Tony Ranasinghe, Sriyani Amarasena, Joe Abeywickrema, Vijaya Kumaratunga, Vasanthi Chathurani and Rukmani Devi, was directed by Lester James Peries.

The screenplay was written by the late Tissa Abeysekara based on a novel by which author?

11 This European capital city is often called the ‘White City of the North’ because many of its buildings are constructed using a locally available, light-coloured granite. The city was ravaged by the Plague in 1710 and burnt to the ground in 1713 and again in 1808. What is it?

12 In 1844, a dentist named Horace Wells in Connecticut, USA, was the first to successfully use an anesthetic to extract teeth. What was the anaesthetic he used, a gas commonly known as ‘laughing gas’?

13 He made a stunning impact on the 1990 FIFA World Cup football finals at age 38.

Having made 80 appearances for Cameroon, he was persuaded out of retirement and helped Cameroon become the first African country to reach the quarter finals of a FIFA World Cup. He scored four goals, becoming the oldest player to do so in the World Cup. In 1994, he played again as a substitute and scored a goal against Russia at the age of 42 – the oldest player to have scored a goal in a World Cup tournament. Who is he?

14 Founded in 1881 in Liege, Belgium, this is the world’s oldest international sports federation, and its headquarters is now located in Lausanne, Switzerland. What is it?

15 This fashion magazine was started in 1945 in France. It was created by a Russian-born French journalist named Helene Lazareff. It was introduced into the US in 1985 and is today the second largest circulating women’s fashion magazine in the world with 35 editions. What is its name?

Answers will be published next week

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Last week’s answers

1. Eris, first identified in January 2005

(formal name: 136199 Eris)

2. Clyde Tombaugh (1906 – 1997)

3. Nix and Hydra

4. Igilena Maaluwo (Flying Fish)

5. Frederik Pohl

6. East Timor

7. Guerlain

8. 40 days

9. Rain

10. John Exter (1910 – 2006)

11. Japan

12. The Mekong (derived from ‘Mae Nam Khong’, a term

of Thai/Lao origin)

13. Elizabeth Taylor

14. Paavo Nurmi

15. George Foreman