To protect against rising waters, the Maldives practice embankment. But this technique of moving the sand to raise the land is strongly criticized by part of the local population.
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In the Maldives, most of the land is less than a meter above sea level. With melting ice and rising sea levels, much of the land in this Indian Ocean archipelago could be submerged or uninhabitable within 30 years. This pushes the authorities to resort to backfilling, by fetching sand from the bottom of the sea to raise the land. However, this work is contested because it destroys a large part of marine life.
On the outskirts of Malé, the capital of the Maldives, Hulhumalé is being expanded with bulldozers. It will soon welcome a new urban area, offering new businesses and housing. This land will rise two meters above the water, much higher than the capital, to protect itself from the rise of the Indian Ocean. “By filling in, they will bury and kill all the nature that was in the lagoon”denounces Humay Abdulghafoor, activist in the Save Maldives collective.
“Corals in neighboring areas will also be affected, because when they collect sand, they release sediment which will cover them and suffocate them.”
Humay Abdulghafoorat franceinfo
The associations are not the only ones to take a dim view of the bulldozers operating on the sand. Fishermen also suffer from this work. “Near here they started harvesting sand in one of the richest places for bait fish,” says Hussein Nashid, who embarks to fish for yellowfin tuna from the port of Hulhumalé. “Their work is making the fish disappear! We can no longer fish. We now have to sail for nine hours, instead of one hour before. And we use 1,000 liters of diesel more.”
More than 500 landfills have taken place in the space of eight years in the Maldives. And this method is now used more for real estate or tourism projects, than to protect against erosion. “A law is under discussion to strengthen the role of the environmental protection agencyassures Lisama Sabry, from the Ministry of the Environment. This law should have the authority to stop projects based on the findings of impact studies. Otherwise, there is no point in doing these studies.”
While waiting for these changes, work is accelerating. The President of the Maldives has just launched the largest landfilling project in the archipelago, near the capital. It will extend over 11 km² to create, among other things, two islands and tourist complexes.