On Saturday, October 17, president Mohamed Nasheed of the Maldives will conduct his national cabinet meeting … 20 feet beneath the surface of the Indian Ocean. The president and his ministers will carry out the full monty under the sea with wetsuits, compressed-air tanks and even waterproof pens and paperwork to persuade world leaders of the impending danger of global climate change and the necessity of carbon emissions cuts.

Rising sea levels threaten to submerge the Maldives, an archipelago with an average elevation of 2 meters and a population of 396,000, within this century. For more on the risks of rising sea levels, watch James Balog’s talk on extreme ice loss and Lewis Pugh’s talk on swimming the North Pole. And at TEDIndia in Mysore, we’ll hear from Charles Anderson, a marine biologist who studies ocean life in the Maldives.