The people of the Maldives face the prospect of life in a “climate refugee camp,” President Mohamed Nasheed warned yesterday as he urged rich countries to clinch an effective global warming treaty.

Calling the South Asian island chain a “frontline state” in the fight against climate change, Mr Nasheed said global warming threatened to submerge his low-lying country and “kill our people” unless action was taken urgently.

“We have a written history of more than 2,000 years and we don’t want to trade our paradise for a climate refugee camp,” he told a climate change summit in New Delhi.

Last weekend, Mr Nasheed’s government staged a cabinet meeting underwater – complete with ministerial scuba gear – to highlight the plight of the archipaelago whose atolls stand a mere 1.5 metres above sea level.

The president stunned the world last year when he announced he wanted to buy a new homeland to relocate the population of the Maldives in the event that damage from rising sea levels became too great.

“What happens to the Maldives today happens to the rest of world tomorrow,” he warned yresterday.

In 2007, the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warned that an increase in sea levels of just 18 to 59 centimetres would make the Maldives virtually uninhabitable by 2100.

The New Delhi conference aims to discuss technology as a tool to help poor nations adapt to climate change ahead of negotiations at a December 7-18 global summit in Copenhagen.

The summit in the Danish capital is aimed at agreeing a successor to the Kyoto Protocol – the only binding global agreement for curbing greenhouse gases.