H.E. Mohammed Nasheed was appointed as the first Secretary General of the CVF in H2023 to head the Secretariat. He served as the Maldives’ first democratically elected President from 2008 to 2012 and Speaker of the People’s Majlis, the Maldives’ parliament, from 2019 to November 2023.
In 2009, the same year he founded the CVF, he held an underwater cabinet meeting to call forstronger action on climate change and also pledged for the Maldives to become carbon neutral.