On Tuesday (9 September), Oxfam released a new report, Climate Wrongs and Human Rights: Putting people at the heart of climate-change policy, which argues that in failing to tackle climate change with urgency, rich countries are violating the human rights of millions of the world's poorest people.

While economics and enlightened self-interest can create powerful reasons for urgently tackling climate change, the irrefutable case for acting is not just because it pays to do so, but because rich countries cannot keep violating the human rights of individuals.

The Maldives, is an island nation in the Indian Ocean comprising 1,190 coral islands. The low level of the islands, was hit by the tsunami in 2004, makes them particularly sensitive to sea level rises. Maumoon Abdul Gayoom, the country's president, writes in the International Herald Tribune, about how the sea is now perceived as a slowly encroaching threat to the Maldives, and the effects of climate are slowly killing the coral reefs and the diverse ecosystems that they support.

He welcomes Climate Wrongs and Human Rights, calling the report "groundbreaking", calls on leaders of the rich industrialized nations to take quick action. They must show that they are not content to allow countries like the Maldives to disappear beneath the waves, and stop making a trade-off between human lives and rights, and economic growth.