Tagged: Maldives environment

The enigmas of environmental governance in the Maldives: a legacy of authoritarian environmentalism

We won’t have a society if we destroyed the environment – Margaret Mead

by Ibrahim Mohamed

The Maldives is one of the world’s most striking paradoxes. On the global stage, we are hailed as a climate champion, a voice for the vulnerable, and a moral compass in international climate negotiations. Yet at home, our environmental governance is fraught with contradictions. While leaders speak passionately about our climate vulnerability in the Conference of the Parties (COP) meetings of United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), our environmental policies at home often tell a different story: a reliance on centralized, top-down governance, weakened institutions, and development strategies that sacrifice environmental integrity for short-term political gains.

This is the enigma of environmental governance in the Maldives. Its Constitution enshrines the duty to protect the natural environment and safeguard intergenerational equity. Yet in practice, decision-making remains trapped in a legacy of what scholars call authoritarian environmentalism, a model where governments centralize control, suppress dissent, and frame environmental management as a technocratic rather than democratic issue (Gilley, 2012). Combined with path-dependent historic institutionalism, the tendency to repeat historical patterns even when they no longer serve the present, results in an environmental governance system that struggles to meet the urgent challenges faced by the Maldives (Mohamed & King, 2017).

For a nation composed of fragile atolls and lagoons, where coral reefs serve as seawalls and wetlands buffer storms, the stakes could not be higher. Weak environmental governance here is not just maladministration, it is also maladaptation to climate change.

Democratic backsliding and its environmental costs

In 2009, then-President Mohamed Nasheed famously declared: “We need democracy for mitigation and adaptation for climate change.” He was right. Democracy creates transparency, fosters participation, and ensures accountability, vital for sustainable environmental policies.

Yet, the Maldives has been drifting in the opposite direction. Freedom House scores show civil liberties and political rights stagnating at low levels between 2020 and 2025. De-democratisation such as curtailing civil society engagement, restricting  media freedom, and undermining judicial independence has emerged during the past two years of the incumbent government. When democratic checks erode, environmental governance suffers. Independent oversight becomes a casualty of political expediency. For instance, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), once semi-autonomous, has been dissolved and reabsorbed into the Ministry of Tourism, under direct executive control (President’s Office, 2025). The replacement of EPA by the Environmental Regulatory Authority (ERA), which answers to political appointees rather than scientific evidence, is a major blow to environmental governance. The message is clear: environmental decision-making is no longer about independent expertise; it is about political convenience.

Dismantling oversight in the name of “necessity”

One of the most troubling trends in recent de-democratisation is the misuse of the “doctrine of necessity”. In law, this principle allows extraordinary measures when a genuine crisis leaves no other option. In the Maldives, however, it has been stretched beyond recognition. The actions of de-democratisation are justified using the  doctrine of necessity. 

Fast-track provisions in EIA regulations now allow projects prioritized by the cabinet to bypass normal scrutiny. Airports, harbors, and reclamation projects can be green-lit within days, sometimes just 24 hours to evaluate and issue approvals. Officials justify this under “necessity,” but the reality is stark: there is no imminent national emergency that requires abandoning environmental safeguards and doing development projects in a haste, while the country is overburdened with debt. Instead, this necessity is a political excuse: a way to push through vote-winning infrastructure projects before elections.

Such shortcuts erode public trust and leave ecosystems vulnerable. Coral reefs cannot regenerate on political timetables. Wetlands cannot buffer floods if they are filled in for roads and airports. By weaponizing the language of necessity, leaders gamble with our natural assets that once lost can never be replaced.

The weight of history: authoritarian legacies and path dependence

To understand why the Maldives struggles with environmental governance, one must look backward. For decades before democratic reforms in 2008, the country was governed through centralized, authoritarian rule. Environmental policies were crafted by technocrats serving political elites, with little space for citizen participation.

The Environmental Protection and Preservation Act of 1993 reflected this approach: decisions were highly centralized, with EIAs carried out by ministry insiders and no independent oversight. Technocrats who challenged government decisions were sidelined, while loyalists were rewarded. This created a civil service culture where public input was seen not as a right, but as an inconvenience, by the intelligentsia of the environmental fraternity.

The 2007 EIA regulation led by Minister Ahmed Abdulla, briefly improved matters by introducing independent evaluators and criteria for site selection for development. It even invoked the Cairo Principles, which stress sustainable, ecosystem-based reconstruction after disasters. But these safeguards were short-lived. The 2012 coup that toppled the first democratically elected government led to a rollback. Parameters protecting reefs and unique ecosystems were stripped away as the conditions for selecting sites and islands for development was abrogated. The drive for “speed and efficiency” trumped precautionary principle and sustainability. In the same year of toppling the government, EIA regulation of 2007 was replaced with a new regulation to expedite approvals. 

While international best practices in Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) emphasize early, inclusive, and substantive public participation, transparent access to information, independent regulation, and enforceable outcomes (García-López & McCormick-Rivera, 2024), the Maldivian system remains narrow and procedural. Public engagement is limited to a short post-report comment period with hearings held only at the Ministry’s discretion, and institutional independence has been undermined by the recent restructuring that placed the EPA under direct ministerial control. Legal standing for citizens is weak, transparency requirements are minimal, and monitoring often lacks enforcement, with government ministries frequently overriding EIA recommendations. For instance, the majority of government projects do not fulfill the monitoring requirements stated in EISs. As a result, despite strong constitutional commitments to sustainability and intergenerational equity, Maldivian EISs risk functioning as box-ticking exercises rather than genuine safeguards of environmental integrity.

This is the essence of path dependency: once institutions are set on a trajectory of authoritarian, top-down decision-making, it becomes extraordinarily difficult to move to new paths. Each subsequent administration tweaks the system to suit its interests, but the fundamental culture of centralized control and disregard for public participation remains intact.

Tourism: a silent but powerful actor

Tourism is the cornerstone of the Maldivian economy, contributing a significant portion of its GDP and generating billions in revenue annually. For example, in 2024, the tourism sector reportedly earned USD 5.6 billion, with resorts accounting for a substantial majority of that revenue. Despite this economic reliance on tourism, the sector’s relationship with environmental governance is complex and has been described as a “silent saboteur” due to its often-detrimental impact on the fragile marine ecosystem, which is, ironically, the very foundation of the industry’s success. This dynamic highlights a conflict between economic growth and environmental sustainability, as tourism development, particularly through large-scale projects, can lead to environmental degradation that undermines the long-term viability of both the industry and the country.

As Zubair, Bowen, and Elwin (2011) demonstrate, EIAs for resorts are often superficial, repetitive, and produced by the same consultants. Reports downplay impacts, rarely engage local communities, and are written in English rather than Dhivehi, excluding ordinary Maldivians from understanding them. In 2015, lobbying by resort owners even succeeded in shifting the authority to approve EIAs for new resorts from the EPA to the Ministry of Tourism: a blatant conflict of interest.

Today, with the Ministry of Tourism and Environment merged, the fox guards the henhouse. Developers with deep political connections push projects that damage reefs, lagoons, and wetlands, while public consultation remains tokenistic. Tourism, instead of being a leader in sustainability, has too often been a beneficiary of weak governance.

Developmentalism as ideology

Underlying these institutional failures is a powerful ideology: developmentalism. This worldview frames economic growth, often through visible infrastructure, as the ultimate goal of governance and the ultimate metric of a state’s success.

Few statements capture this better than Environment Minister Thoriq Ibrahim’s defense of reclamation: “As a tiny island nation, if we have to grow economically, land reclamation projects have to be carried out. After all, Maldives is only one percent of the land, and the other 99% is the Indian Ocean” (Devex, 2020).

At first glance, this may sound pragmatic. But it also reveals a profound blindness. The Maldives’ strength lies precisely in its marine ecosystems, the coral reefs, seagrass beds, and lagoons that sustain fisheries, attract tourists, and buffer climate impacts. To treat the ocean as “empty space” to be filled is to misunderstand the foundation of Maldivian survival. The pace and scale of modern reclamation projects in the Maldives are unprecedented, with environmental impact assessments (EIAs) often conducted in haste. Critics point out that these assessments, while legally required, are sometimes rushed, leading to insufficient consideration of long-term ecological damage. For example, a 2022 article in The Guardian detailed concerns about reclamation in Addu Atoll, a UNESCO biosphere reserve. The EIS  for the project revealed that the reclamation could bury significant areas of coral and seagrass, threatening local fishing and marine life and causing substantial revenue loss from the atoll’s natural resources (Boztas, 2022).

This approach aligns with the concept of the authoritarian developmental state, as described by scholars such as Mark Beeson (2010). Beeson notes that these states often legitimize their rule by delivering visible, large-scale progress, particularly through impressive infrastructure projects. In the Maldivian context, reclamation serves this purpose, creating new islands, airports, and housing that political leaders can showcase as proof of progress in election campaigns. However, this is development as spectacle, not sustainability. It prioritizes short-term political gains and economic outputs over the long-term ecological health and survival of the nation.

The contradiction at the heart of Maldivian developmental policy is a microcosm of a global challenge. It forces a critical examination of what “development” truly means for a small island nation facing existential threats from climate change. While projects like the Hulhumalé and Ras Malé reclamation efforts are framed as necessary adaptation measures to create more resilient, elevated land, politically motivated pledges to reclaim every inhabited island, regardless of the cost to benefit, is unsustainable in the  long run.

Even though the country has made strides, with laws like the Climate Emergency Act of 2021, the challenge remains in balancing urgent infrastructure needs with the preservation of its fragile environment. The Maldivian experience offers a powerful case study for how the pursuit of a narrow, growth-centric ideology can lead a nation to inadvertently dismantle its own ecological foundations, highlighting the urgent need for a more holistic and sustainable approach to development. 

Governance deficits and corruption

Behind developmentalism lies a darker reality: corruption. Close ties between political elites and corporate actors mean EIAs are often designed to serve private interests rather than the public good. Consultancy firms with vested ties to developers produce glowing reports that gloss over ecological harm. Regulatory capture hijacked with weak independence ensures EIA approvals are a foregone conclusion.

As Mohamed and King (2017) and Zuhair and Kurian (2016) have shown, systemic governance deficits, like nepotism, cronyism  and weak oversight turn EIAs into legitimizing instruments for projects rather than checks on them. Combined with austerity and low funding for regulators, technical capacity is hollowed out, leaving oversight agencies ill-equipped to resist political pressure.

This cycle of corruption and weak governance entrenches inequality: elites profit from lucrative contracts, while communities bear the costs in the form of eroded reefs, declining fisheries, and lost livelihoods.

The existential risk: climate change versus reclamation

Perhaps the most dangerous expression of this authoritarian developmentalism is land reclamation. Unlike continental states, the Maldives has no hinterland. Its land area is finite and fragile, and its very existence is threatened by rising seas. Coral reefs and wetlands are natural defenses. To destroy them through reclamation is to weaken the nation’s armor in the face of climate change. This forces the nation to build hard engineering infrastructure as the islands lose their natural adaptation capacity owing to heavy coastal modifications. While faced with absolute land scarcity, the country does not place any policies or planning measures for efficient land use planning or sustainable urbanisation. The majority of reclamations don’t account for future sea-level projections, which could lead to major issues. For instance, some beachfront properties in Hulhumale now face annual tidal inundations.

Naturally, the fervent push for land reclamation is merely a noble quest for “national survival.” It certainly has nothing to do with benefiting the elite interests and cozy patronage networks of real estate cartels. The textbook case of how reclamation conveniently leads to corruption can be seen in the sale of lands and the development of real estate in Hulhumale: a perfect example of how public good is so often intertwined with private gain. Recently, the Anti Corruption Commission of the Maldives has halted the lease of huge areas of reclaimed lands in Addu for tourism development, owing to alleged corruption. Large-scale projects generate lucrative contracts for politically connected developers and create new real estate for tourism, luxury housing and urban expansion. Several senior politicians such as parliamentarians and former presidents also own a lot of properties in Hulhumale. Hence, land scarcity is manufactured by politicians to serve the interests of the oligarchy which empowers them. In this sense, reclamation is developmentalism as spectacle: a visible, concrete promise of progress that can be showcased in campaign rallies and election manifestos, even if its long-term social and ecological costs are devastating. Beeson (2010) describes this as part of the authoritarian bargain: citizens are offered visible signs of growth, while critical voices are excluded from meaningful decision-making. This is environmental governance reduced to procedure, not principle.

Yet reclamation projects continue at breakneck speed. Mathiveri Falhu’s reclamation for an airport was approved within 24 hours, an absurd time frame for any serious environmental review. The irony is the intelligentsia engaged in this process as EIA consultants and reviewers benefiting politically and financially on the behest of huge economic and ecological costs to tax payers. Reclamation also has become a political theater: a dredger and excavator are now standard props in campaign tours of the executive and his entourage. 

The irony is stark: the Maldives campaigns globally for stronger climate action, yet at home it undermines its own resilience. Its environmental governance has become governance in form, not substance.

A constitutional duty ignored

What makes this trajectory particularly troubling is that it violates not only ecological prudence but also constitutional duty. Article 22 of the Maldivian Constitution obliges the state to protect the natural environment for present and future generations. Every rushed reclamation project, every EIA ignored and expedited, every consultation bypassed is not just bad policy, it is unconstitutional.

Yet the courts have been silent. Public interest litigation on decimation of the coastal marine environment is neglected. The bar and bench look on as constitutional promises are broken. Betraying Article 22, is an offense which can even initiate the impeachment of the executive. 

Constitutions are meant to safeguard long-term public interests against short-term expediency. By disregarding these obligations, leaders betray both the spirit and the letter of the law.

A choice between spectacle and survival

The Maldives now faces a stark choice. It can continue down the path of authoritarian developmentalism, where growth is measured in lands reclaimed, roads paved and airports built, regardless of ecological cost. Or it can embrace democratic, participatory, and sustainable governance, where environmental integrity is placed at the heart of development.

The second path will not be easy. It requires restoring independence to environmental regulators, expanding genuine public participation, meaningful decentralisation and ensuring transparency in decision-making. It demands confronting corruption and rethinking the ideology that equates progress with unlimited economic growth, or rather unlimited land reclamation.

But it is the only path compatible with survival. The Maldives cannot build its way out of climate vulnerability by destroying the environment. It can only survive by strengthening the ecosystems that sustain it.

Conclusion: reclaiming the future

The Maldives’ international credibility as a climate leader will not be secured by speeches at UNFCCC, COP summits. It will be secured in its lagoons, reefs, and wetlands and  the choices it makes about how to balance development with ecology, power with accountability, spectacle with survival.

To reclaim legitimacy, the Maldives must change the path to democratic environmental governance and stronger reforms, instead of going down a de-democratisation path and sinking inexorably into the abyss. 

Dr. Ibrahim Mohamed is an expert in environmental social science with a Ph.D. in Climate Change Adaptation from James Cook University. His career in the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) spanned from 2008 to 2021, where he held various roles. Notably, he served as an Assistant Director of Assessments from 2009 to 2011, during which he led the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) section, before his promotion to Deputy Director General.

Photo: Mohamed Aiman

Maldives: Ecocide as Achievement

Humay Abdulghafoor

On 15 March 2023, fireworks and led lights lit up a site of state sponsored ecocide in the southernmost tip of Gaaf Dhaal atoll in the Maldives, as President Solih celebrated another destructive airport project.

Holding pole position on the victim-list of global climate change, Maldives pleads shamelessly for global climate funds.  It also expects to blamelessly destroy finite natural ecosystems and climate change defences for short-term political expediency, and claim from the international taxpayer to ‘mitigate’ willful ecocide. The government of Maldives is well aware of the imminent and unknowable impacts of global climate heating to its natural foundations, which constitute the seventh largest coral system in the world. The country’s finite ecosystems including coral reefs, seagrass beds, mangroves, wetlands and the rich and yet to be studied biodiversity within, sustains the nation’s economic lifelines – its tourism and fishing industries. The Maldives State of the Environment Report 2016 says that 98% of the country’s exports and 71% of its employment are directly linked to its biodiversity sector. This is unsurprising in a nation constituting 99% ocean and 1% land. This land which lies mostly below the one meter mark above mean sea level, is entirely dependent on the stability of its surrounding marine environment.

However, the government of Maldives’ development approach undermines the stability of the balance of nature in the country. It entertains a policy of domestic aviation and airport infrastructure that is grossly and disproportionately overblown in the context, capacity and need, at the expense of multiple ecosystems. The policy to have a domestic airport at every 20-30 minute travel distance attempts to justify expansion that is financially and environmentally debilitating to the country.

The multitude of questionable and destructive ecocide projects like Faresmaathodaa Airport are not environmentally accounted. The extreme loss and damage inflicted on ecosystems, the loss of services they provide to communities and existing businesses dependent on them are not valued, as a matter of practice. These projects are conducted as if these natural systems have no inherent value as the natural defences of the country. It is a well established fact that the country’s reef ecosystem foundations were instrumental in defending these small, low-lying islands in the middle of the Indian ocean. The 2004 Asian Tsunami travelling at a speed of 500 mph was slowed down by these reef defences that took the brunt of the hit. To destroy and bury these defences willfully during a self-proclaimed ‘climate emergency’ is akin to digging its own grave. The government of Maldives is invested in free riding on the narrative that it faces an existential crisis due to global climate heating, and take no responsibility to cease widespread and irresponsible ecocide nationally.

Faresmaathodaa Airport Ecocide

The political fanfare and fireworks surrounding the Faresmaathodaa ecocide is a superficial show covering up extreme environmental loss and damage, the value of which is entirely dismissed and ignored. The airport was built by destroying 5 uninhabited islets south of the inhabited island of Faresmaathodaa. The reclamation component of the project is nearly MVR 80 million (~USD 5.3 million). According to the State broadcaster PSM, the airport project cost an estimated USD 10 million.

The environmental damage and destruction the project will cause is outlined in the project environmental assessment (EIA) of July 2018. The project was estimated to remove 14,000 to 16,000 trees from the impact area, although the environmental or social cost was not accounted. The EIA further said that

“coastal construction activities will involve significant adverse impacts on the marine water quality and marine life. The most significant will be the turbidity impacts from the dredging, reclamation and shore protection activities. Biota associated with the seabed within these footprints will be lost, either due to physical removal during dredging or burial during reclamation works.” (project EIA, pg.xvii – italics added).

The report further described the project’s proposed and anticipated future impacts, saying that,

“There are potentially severe impacts predicted due to hydrodynamic changes. The reclamation across five islands and funneling effect created between Faresmaathodaa and the airport may cause severe erosion on the eastern shoreline of Fares and western shoreline of Kan’dehdhudhuvaa. There is also strong likelihood of flooding on the airport due to the elevation and shore protection designs proposed, and given the fact that Faremaathodaa [sic] has a known history of coastal flooding.” (project EIA, pg.xvii – italics added).

The decision to ignore the environmental and ecological consequences of ecocide to build short-term, ecologically high-impact and loss-making infrastructure for political gain undermines every legal and governance requirement to develop Maldives sustainably. This approach to infrastructure development imposes a crippling environmental and financial burden on the country, incurring loss upon loss.

Kulhudhuffushi Airport Ecocide

Politically driven ecocide projects continue to plague the Maldivian people and their aspirations for meaningful change to improve their lives through sustainable development activities. Sustainability, viability, economic and financial feasibility are of little to no concern for politician-driven ecocide projects. In October 2017, the government of Maldives went ahead with the destruction of Kulhudhuffushi mangroves and wetland to build an airport in the middle of one of the largest wetland ecosystems in the country, amid public protests. State owned company MTCC Plc with no experience in airport development was assigned the project, using its first ever dredging vessel built by Netherlands company ICH Holland in China. In a press statement, the President’s Office said that the vessel, named “Mahaa Jarraafu is capable of conducting land reclamation activities without causing damage to the environment.” (italics added)

The project’s immediate negative consequences were widespread, including the displacement and dispossession of local livelihood resources and economies affecting over 400 families. Other impacts to the community showed when Kulhudhuffushi began to experience increased flooding which had significant direct impacts on people’s homes and property. Efforts by the #SaveMaldives Campaign and concerned stakeholders to protect the remaining part of the wetlands have been ignored by the current government.

In 2023, Kulhudhuffushi airport requires extensive shore-protection works as erosion threatens it. The national budget has thus far allocated over MVR 20 million (~USD 1.4 million) to address the continuing impacts of the destruction caused by the airport project. Today, nearly 6 years after the project began, Kulhudhuffushi Airport is still not fully operational. Notably, President Yameen Abdul Gayoom was impatient to inaugurate the airport project, and did so before the airport terminal could be completed, as part of his failed re-election campaign in 2018. The airport continues to suffer from significant critical infrastructure deficits which limit flight movements.  Its operational functions were initially hindered by the absence of key operational components such as fire and rescue and ground handling services. To date, the airport has yet to install runway lights.

Hoarafushi Airport Ecocide

The ecocide case of Haa Alif Atoll Hoarafushi Airport which was a political project initiated in 2019 showed yet again the catastrophic consequences of willful ecosystem destruction by the government of Maldives and its political decision-makers. The airport was constructed in record time by the Maldives State owned company MTCC Plc (once again), and opened with the usual fanfare by President Solih in November 2019. Initial reports suggested the airport construction cost MVR 198 million (~USD 13.2 million) while another said it cost MVR 211 million (~USD 14 million).  The government project portal shows that between 2019 and 2021, over MVR 233 million (~USD 15.5 million) had been spent on this project.

The project EIA’s First Addendum of March 2019, on the strength of which the project was approved, reached the following conclusion :

“The study found that through the implementation of the proposed practical and cost effective mitigation measures in this addendum report in conjunction with the EIA all significant impacts can be brought to an acceptable level.” (pg. 158) 

This pivotal project EIA document provides no valuation or accounting for environmental or ecological loss and damage the project would cause. At this point, it might interest the reader to know that the producer of the Hoarafushi Airport EIA is the incumbent People’s Majlis (Maldives parliament) MP for Hoarafushi, Ahmed Saleem who ran for his parliamentary seat for this constituency in April 2019, with a pledge to develop this airport. MP Saleem is also the Chairperson of the permanent parliamentary committee known as the Environment and Climate Change Committee. In this capacity, he is also known for having submitted an application in December 2019 to the International Criminal Court on behalf of the Maldives, to make ecocide an international crime. The situation could hardly be more ironic, duplicitous or dishonorable.

Just five months after its November 2019 inauguration, Hoarafushi Airport was inundated due to high winds and tidal surges during the monsoon in May 2020, causing significant losses raising key questions about the project’s planning, construction and management. In April 2021, reports emerged that the causeway linking Hoarafushi island to the airport would be removed, confirming the serious gaps in the project’s planning, approval and implementation.  A scientific study on coastal flooding in the Maldives published in 2021 observed that Hoarafushi island experiences the “highest incoming waves in the archipelago”. The fact that the Hoarafushi Airport EIA addendum was produced by a technical practitioner who either missed or deliberately ignored this basic scientific fact is astounding. This leaves room to suggest that the evident personal conflict of interest in this case trumped the public interest. The fact that the Maldives Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) also failed to act on this fundamental fact by approving the airport EIA is indicative of monumental regulatory failures. These failures highlight the political realities that make unchecked ecocide actively endorsed and normative in the Maldives. The complete absence of accountability and professional due diligence undermines the ecological and human security, and therefore, the present and future stability of the country.

Ecocide as Achievement for Political Expedience

This brings me back to the case of Faresmaathodaa Airport. It is not lost to the Maldivian people that Faresmaathodaa is the home island of the incumbent Minister for National Planning, Housing and Infrastructure, Mohamed Aslam. Similar to Mr Saleem MP for Hoarafushi, he also has a professional history of producing EIAs. Prior to his current cabinet post, Mr Aslam, who holds a BSc in Geological Oceanography, held the position of director at the EIA consultancy company La Mer. There, he was personally involved in the production of the EIA to construct a causeway between the islands of Madaveli and Hoadedhdhoo in Gaaf Dhaal atoll, in 2016. This project was also commissioned to MTCC Plc, and have proved to be an ongoing, financially wasteful and catastrophic ecocide project since 2012. This history has relevance to the kind of decision-making we see by these politicians.

The Faresmaathodaa Airport project plans pre-date the current administration. The opportunity to prevent the loss of environmental stability of 6 islands and their surrounding natural defences and assets was available to this government. President Solih’s government and his cabinet in which Mr Aslam sits, chose not to do that. They chose to commit willful ecocide in this case, as in several others, continuing to gaslight the public and attempt to package these acts of destruction and irreversible losses as achievements.

As long as political decision-makers in influential positions are allowed to exploit public finances and environmental assets for personal political expedience, the Maldives vulnerability to climate disasters will continue to spiral. High level officials including the President, members of his Cabinet and their partners in the Peoples’ Majlis continue to celebrate ecocide as achievement in the Maldives. This stands in absolute and stark contrast to the narrative of vulnerability to climate change these same public officials attempt to sell, especially internationally. Their gross professional misconduct and failure to uphold legal and public duty should be understood as that.

This article, with its accompanying images, was first published on 19 March 2023 on SaveMaldives.net Click here to visit the original article and sign the petition #SaveAddu Biosphere Reserve. Re-posted here with author’s permission.

Image 1: Kulhudhuffushi before the Airport Ecocide 📷 Save Maldives campaign, Image 2: Faresmaathodaa (2011 – 2022) 📷 Google Earth, Image 3: Kulhudhuffushi (2006 – 2022) 📷 Google Earth, Image 4: Hoarafushi (2016 – 2022) 📷 Google Earth

Maldives : Climate Doublespeak and The Great Deformation

Humay Abdulghafoor

Maldives is sinking – a nation in peril!

Maldives is climate vulnerable – fighting for survival on the frontline of climate change!

Maldives faces climate disaster dangerously on the brink of an existential crisis!

Maldives has no higher ground to climb to save its people!

Maldives has declared a national climate emergency!

Maldives calls to make ecocide a crime at the international criminal court!

Maldives enacts a climate emergency law!

Maldives represents climate ambition at the Climate Vulnerability Forum!

Maldives pleads to be “saved” at the UN FCCC COP, vociferously and incessantly every year without fail, trying “to be heard” by the world.

Maldives is a leading voice of the at risk AOSIS and the sinking SIDS!!

Maldives continues to tell the world about its existential crisis, a situation not of its own making, but created by “developed” nations and the great carbon emitters of the world, declaring : “We are paying with our lives for the carbon someone else emitted.”[1]

Make no mistake, stated “climate champion” of Maldives, Mohamed Nasheed: “If we do not act now we will lose our coral reefs, we will lose our beaches, and I’m sure tomorrow it will be you.”[2] 

One would imagine that the Maldives, this unique earthly paradise pleading to the world to be saved from climate disaster will join any effort to save itself. 

That would be the logical action of anyone teetering on the brink of an existential threat.

But not the Maldives.

Self-identifying as unique in every way, including its millennia long history, culture, identity and its centuries old 100% Muslimness and great sense of absolute piety, Maldives finds itself unable to tell the glaring truth about itself, to itself. Instead, the country indulges in climate doublespeak internationally while dredging itself into its own early grave.

The leadership of Maldives, starting with the country’s apparently immortal leader Maumoon Abdul Gayyoom, with his style of “development” of the country has always left a trail of irreparable damage to natural heritage and  ecosystems. His successors have followed him.  Each as destructive as the other, at the same time imploring the international community to take urgent action to save the Maldives.

Addressing the UN General Assembly in October 1987, a few months after a devastating wave surge caused significant damage to the Maldives in April that year, Gayyoom said, “we in the Maldives have seen and lived through grim experiences which could be the indicators of the dire consequences of global environmental change provoked and aggravated by man.“[3]  In his wisdom, Gayyoom left a legacy of reclamation and destruction of pristine reefs and lagoons, destroying these natural defences as development solutions in his imperiled nation.  Seventeen years later, the December 2004 Asian Tsunami provided ample proof of the power of the Maldives reefs, mangroves and other natural coastal ecosystems to protect the country from climate events. These ecosystems effectively took the full force of the tsunami that blasted at its shores without warning at 500km/hour at “the speed of a jet plane” that December morning, saving countless lives and reducing the death toll.

Gayyoom is the great leader that “developed” Male’, the world’s most congested city slum to the ocean edges of its reef, exposing this low-lying capital city to climate disaster.  He is also the leader that created several other zones of ecocide, including the now infamous Thilafushi apocalyptic waste dump and toxic bomb on a once pristine reef, off the south-western coast of Male’.  Thilafushi is a disaster that has been oozing pollution, contaminating the ocean and its associated marine and human food-chains for decades. He also embarked on an allegedly “safe island” created by destroying another large pristine living coral reef system north-east of Male’, gobbling up nearby Farukolhufushi island in its wake.  Gayyoom, dubbed “a man for all islands” is the indisputable forebearer of the great deformation and distortion of the natural environment of the Maldives.

In 2008, President Nasheed replaced Gayyoom. The Island President outperformed Gayyoom’s rhetoric and doublespeak to tell the world about the Maldives’ vulnerability to global climate change disaster.  He rapidly rose to “climate champion” fame by holding an under-water cabinet meeting, to visually explain how Maldives could well become the next Atlantis.  He too became a leader of the great deformation, embarking on reclamation projects that made Gayyoom’s look like “sixth form projects”.[4]  Across the country, Nasheed launched a campaign of ecosystem degradation and decimation fueled by a political rhetoric of housing need and grand infrastructure developments that left communities bereft of their natural coastal defences.  Global dredging companies were handed multi-million dollar contracts from public debt, and mobilised quickly for “development”.  These trans-national companies happily destroyed the natural reefs and other coastal defences of communities. The communities, led by their saviour-politicians, seemingly unaware of the role these ecosystems played in their survival in the Indian Ocean. The two-millennia long historical indigenous knowledge of human settlement and survival in the ocean archipelago had become forgotten history.

Yameen Abdul Gayyoom arrived in 2013, embarking on an even grander scale of ecosystem degradation – simply because he was the President and he can, so he did. This particular Gayyoom enjoyed the services of trans-national dredging company Van Oord that decimated Maldives during the global coral bleaching peak year of 2016, “with care”, and impunity.  While the coral reefs bleached to near complete loss across the country, dredgers conducted funeral rites by allegedly conducting reclamation over a 600km project footprint, giving the reefs no chance, let alone to recover.  President Yameen is globally known for his involvement in Stealing Paradise, a corruption scandal of a magnitude thus far not documented in such detail in the Maldives. This Theft of Maldives is reported to have involved the liberal, generous – and criminal – distribution of reefs and lagoons to the easiest bidder who wanted a piece of paradise, intent to create money selling paradise, mostly by creating artificial islands requiring intensive reclamation, loss and damage.  Examples of these abound in North Male’ Atoll, with the involvement of global names such as the Waldorf Astoria. This wave of deformation of Maldives has transformed the visual natural beauty of the country to something unrecognisably ugly and unworthy of the label, “paradise”. The erased marine biodiversity and habitat loss is out of sight and out of mind, while resort developers busily green-washed their artificial dead zones.

Not satisfied with the nationwide acts of ecocide by global dredging companies like Boskalis, MT Højgaard and Van Oord, President Yameen chose to invest in the country’s very own wrecking machine, a suction hopper dredger baptised “Mahaa Jarraafaa”, received from China in 2017 with great fanfare.  Its first victim was the island of Kulhudhuffushi in Haa Dhaal Atoll which is one of the largest such ecosystems in the country. The island lost its climate resilience to an airstrip, dispossessing sustainable community livelihoods of hundreds of families in the project’s wake.  The tarmac was laid in the middle of its ancient white-mud wetland and mangroves which made up the island’s groundwater recharge, flood-water drainage and climate defence systems. The island just happens to be the largest urban centre in the north of the country, located in a “tsunami high risk” zone.[5]  Kulhudhuffushi now experiences increased flooding and damage to property on a regular basis.  Civil society calls to conserve the wetland’s remaining part continue to be ignored. This case exemplifies the depth of (dis)regard for the Maldives’ climate vulnerability expressed by its climate-champion leadership over the decades. As reef systems were blasted and macerated by machines, the Maldives trembled under the pressures of dredging developments.  Young Maldivian blogger Yameen Rasheed (brutally murdered for his courage to express his thoughts) left us this satirical yet apt observation in his blog The Daily Panic in 2016. “Deriving perverse pleasure from blowing up a ten-thousand year old coral reef may seem excessively pornographic. But when accompanied by tea and refreshments, it is a downright adventure.”  

The impunity with which ecological damage was done in Yameen Gayyoom’s administration continued unhindered, following the election of President Ibrahim Mohamed Solih in 2018.  This latest island president is content with the ecosystem degradation inflicted by unchecked reclamation.  The administration engages in patchy public relations activities at opportune moments to ‘protect the environment’.  Declarations are made protecting specific areas, while advocating a policy of protecting “one island, one reef and one mangrove” in each of the 20 atolls in the country, which is closer to public mockery than public policy!  Not to be outdone by his climate champion predecessors, President Solih is yet another saviour who gives his own ghost-written speeches about the government’s desire to save the country’s natural beauty.  Speaking at the opening of the parliament in 2019, he said:  “To preserve the tropical beauty of the Maldives and safeguard the archipelagic nature of our island nation, the Government will give special priority to protecting our natural environment.”[6]

Exhibiting his definition of environmental protection, President Solih’s 3+ year administration has engaged the services of the long-established Maldives State owned enterprise (SoE) MTCC Plc to wreak havoc on the country’s natural environment.  The company celebrates its business of irreversibly undermining the climate resilience of communities as a matter of national pride.  Like other disaster-capitalist ventures, MTCC boasted record profits at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020, a trend which continues in 2022, making the President giddy with a sense of achievement and calling the company a “role model”.  What the narrative conveniently sets aside is the inconvenient truths of the irreparable harm MTCC has been consistently unleashing on the country, the actual cost of which is never counted or accounted.  These projects generate repeat business, as they leave the people of Maldives wide open and exposed to climate disasters that have to be rectified with more unsustainable remedial projects from public debt.  President Solih is the current climate-champion of the Maldives giving his full commitment to the great deformation of the Maldives.   His government is forging ahead with another record-breaking project that threatens to destroy over 2km of coral reef ecosystems impacting marine wildlife and habitat including several marine protected areas.  This is the government’s wonder-project, the Gulhifalhu Port Development project, contracted to Boskalis Westminster without a bid in 2019. The project is facing civil litigation in court at the moment.  The latest in the continuing acts of State sponsored ecocide is the sudden and ad-hoc initiation of a multi-million-dollar reclamation project to join Shaviyani Atoll Komandoo with its neighbouring island Mathikomandoo, on the eve of a parliamentary bi-election.  The climate resilience of this already destroyed island and its people is the last thing on the leader’s mind if at all, the priority being the parliamentary seat at stake.

A notable attribute of successive Presidents at the helm of the Maldives’ great deformation is the complete lack of interest to assess the damage they inflict on the country’s finite coral reef ecosystems, as they indulge in their doublespeak at international fora.  Maldives shows no interest to study its own ecosystem degradation, loss and damage, but stand eager to lead the call for others to act and provide funds to climate vulnerable nations, notably to itself.  Maldivian governments act entitled to such funds, with no semblance of accountability for its own self-inflicted destruction, evidence of which is collected and studied mostly by those outside the country.  This complete disregard to the realities of science is the real death-knell to the Maldives.

As the UN Secretary General announced “Code Red for humanity” and the UN IPCC heralds a bleak future for nations on the frontline of climate change, the Maldives is set to arrive at that place of irreparable environmental doom by expediting that horror on itself before the global climate systems do.  The Maldives is wilfully tipping itself into the climate crisis.  The climate champions of the Maldives are in fact, irreverent self-harmers, killing the nation’s own lifelines and immune system to sustain their immediate political and business greed, at the expense of the country and people they are elected to govern.

Maldives is being sunk by its “climate-champion” politicians.

[1] Comments by former Maldives’ President, Mohamed Nasheed, the CVF’s Ambassador for Ambition, following the release of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Working Group I contribution to the Sixth Assessment Report, The Climate Vulnerability Forum, [undated – circa August 2021], https://thecvf.org/our-voice/statements/president-nasheed-remarks-on-ipcc-ar6-wg1-report/

[2] Lecture by His Excellency President Mohamed Nasheed, at Freie Universiate [sic] Berlin, The President’s Office – Maldives, 11 March 2010, https://presidency.gov.mv/Press/Article/22422

[3] Address by His Excellency Mr Maumoon Abdul Gayoom, President of the Republic of Maldives, before the Forty Second Session of the United Nations General Assembly on the Special Debate on Environment and Development, 19 October 1987, Friends of Maldives (web archive), http://papers.risingsea.net/Maldives/Gayoom_speech.html

[4] Words used by President Nasheed at a stakeholder function in Male’ describing coral regeneration projects in Maldives 

[5] Detailed Island Risk and Vulnerability Assessment, HDh Kulhudhuffushi, Ryan Pvt Ltd / Ministry of Energey and Environment, November 2013

[6] Unofficial translation of the presidential address, 2019, The President’s Office – Maldives, 7 February 2019, https://presidency.gov.mv/Press/Article/20617

About the author: Humay is a concerned citizen trying to raise awareness about unchecked environmental degradation in the Maldives. She is a volunteer for the Save Maldives Campaign www.savemaldives.net @SaveMaldivesMV