The president of the Maldives was named Wednesday the winner of the annual for his efforts to fight climate change and his role in bringing democracy to the island nation.
The Anna Lindh Memorial fund said President Mohamed Nasheed, 41, was honored for highlighting the effects global warming will have on the population of the Maldives. If climate change continues at its current pace, the island nation risks being covered by water within 100 years, the fund said.
«President Nasheed and the people of the Maldives show us that climate change is an issue of existential dimensions,» fund chairman Jan Eliasson said.
Nasheed declared in March that the Maldives would become the world's first carbon-neutral country within 10 years.
In a statement on the president's office Web site, Nasheed said the prize «will stand as an apt testament to the brave and diligent efforts of all ordinary Maldivians.
Last year, Nasheed was sworn in as the Maldives' first democratically elected president, ending three decades of single-party rule in the Indian Ocean archipelago. He had been jailed while in opposition and in 1996 Amnesty International named him a prisoner of conscience.
The 150,000 kronor ($19,000) prize was established to honor Lindh, the Swedish foreign minister who was stabbed to death in 2003. It supports those fighting prejudice and oppression.
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