MALDIVES FACE THREATS OF SEBMERGE IN THE SEA, BUILD ISLANDS FOR LIVING

The Maldivian capital of Malé is one of the world’s most densely populated cities. (Reinhard Krause)

The Maldives is also the lowest-lying country in the world, and one of the most vulnerable to rising sea levels. 

Maldivian governments have long responded to this problem with a seemingly straightforward solution: building more land. 

Over the past 40 years, the country has expanded its landmass by about 10 per cent (30 square kilometres), dredging sand from the sea floor and dumping it in shallow lagoons.

This approach has been a point of national pride for leaders and government officials in the Maldives.

‘A threatened paradise’

Aishath Azfa, a graduate researcher at the University of Melbourne who grew up in Malé and has more than 15 years’ experience working in the Maldives’ development planning sector, described land scarcity as an “ongoing chronic issue that all governments are struggling to find a solution to”.

“In the Maldives, because the land is so scarce, there’s really not enough land for people to live decently and have access to housing,” Ms Azfa told the ABC.

“When there’s no land you create land – but when you create land you are taking loans.”

In Kulhudhuffushi, an island in the country’s far north where, the Maldivian government had built an airport in 2017-18 by overriding the objections of environmental regulators, which buried huge swaths of mangroves. This was, in fact, a project of reclamation of land by destroying land protecting shield of mangroves, which used to act as natural buffer against waves, tides and erosion, flooding on Kulhudhuffushi.

Elsewhere across the country, reclamation projects are having a various other of impacts on the natural landscape, lagoons, fishing grounds and sensitive coral reef ecosystems.

“The environmental cost of these projects is well documented,” according to Patricia Gossman, an associate director for Human Rights Watch’s (HRW) Asia division who has worked in the Maldives since 2018.

“It’s not that communities don’t want some development … but if [these projects are] carried out in a way that ends up harming the fishing communities or other businesses that people depend on, then they’re not really to the benefit of the communities.”

‘City of Hope’

Some development projects have proven more beneficial than others.

In 2004, the government inaugurated Hulhumalé, a 4-square-kilometre artificial island built just north of Malé to relieve acute housing pressures and provide safe haven from rising seas. 

Over the past two decades the project, nicknamed the “City of Hope”, has served as an effective catchment area for the growing number of people spilling over from the capital. 

According to the latest census data in 2022, it has a population of more than 65,700 people.

It is for this reason that, despite some environmental impact, experts and international bodies have lauded Hulhumalé, with the Global Centre on Adaptation describing it as a “monumental climate adaptation effort [that] raises hope in a threatened paradise”.

Many believe most other reclamation projects, however, only threaten that paradise further.

The power of tourism

It’s an approach that has attracted controversy — not least from the Maldives environmental watchdog, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

Yet despite ongoing calls for change, sand is still being dredged and islands built for purposes of tourism.

Last month, the Maldives Fund Management Corporation (MFMC) revealed it had initiated a wide-scale tourism project that will dredge and reclaim 16 islands across the Kaafu Atoll, near Malé.

The development, which falls under an initiative aimed at boosting the Maldives’ tourism industry, will see 14 private islands established in the lagoon, along with two luxury tourist resorts, at an estimated cost of $US36 million.

Such projects signal the continuation of a trend that has long disturbed the Maldivians, who have seen successive governments neglect systemic issues of housing shortage in favour of short-term financial gains.

Credit: ABC News Network, Australia

(https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-06-15/)