The Maldives faces the threat of extinction from rising sea levels, but the government said on Thursday it was looking to the future with plans to build homes and a golf course that can float.

An increase in sea levels of just 18 to 59 centimeters would make the Maldives — a nation of a number of tiny coral islands in the Indian Ocean — not suitable for humans to live in by 2100, the UN's climate change experts have warned.

    President Mohamed Nasheed has declared a fight for survival, and last month he signed a deal with a Dutch company to study suggestions for a floating structure that could support a conference centre, homes and an 18-hole golf course.

    The company, Dutch Docklands, is currently building floating developments in the Netherlands and Dubai. Its website said it undertook projects that make “land from water by providing large-scale floating constructions to create similar conditions as on land”.

    The Maldives began to work on an artificial island known as the Hulhumale near the crowded capital island of Male in 1997 and more than 30,000 people have been settled there in order to ease crowdedness. The city, which has a population of 100,000, is already protected from rising sea levels by a 30-million-dollar sea wall, and the government is considering increasingly imaginative ways to fight climate change.

    Nasheed, who held the world's first underwater cabinet (内阁) meeting in October to highlight his people's serious and difficult situation, has even spoken of buying land elsewhere in the world to enable Maldivians to relocate if their homes are completely covered.

    He has also promised to turn his nation into a model for the rest of the world by becoming “carbon neutral (碳中和)” by 2020. His plan involves ending fossil fuel use and powering all vehicles and buildings from “green” sources such as burning coconut husks.