Kenia Sadoun

Behind the image of paradise islands and first choice holidays, Maldives start to be known for something else than coconuts and turquoise water. Located in the Indian Ocean, offshore Sri Lanka and Tamil Nadu (India), the 800km long volcanic archipelago and its 1,200 islands makes tourism its top priority and first economic input. But what is the cost of such choices?

Ecocide, slavery, corruption and identity loss: the postcard decline. At the same time, millions of tourists are still coming every year. Clients who prefer closing their eyes on reality and enjoy artificial landscapes producing huge environmental and social consequences.

Hanifary Bay, protected by UNESCO, is controlled by the NGO MantaTrust. They try to limit the number of tourists in the water at the same time. Everyone wants to see the great show of hundreds of manta rays , sometimes with a giant whale-shark. If you want to swim with them, you have to pay an official tour operator who fills his boat as much as possible. Five boats maximum can be in the bay at the same time, creating a fence to let tourists snorkel in a human bath full of suncream during 45 minutes, until the next groups replace them. However, these restrictions are clearly not enough to protect the place.

Maldives has quickly become an “instagramable” destination. In fact, all resorts propose special offers for influencers. The first tourists were Italian journalists and photographers and arrived in 1972 in a resort named Kurumba (which means coconut in Dhivehi). Before becoming a resort, this island was a no man’s land, a coconut field. Nowadays, it presents all the characteristics of luxury tourism. At that time, the main activity proposed by the country (to tourists) was sunbathing, maybe a little too much. The man who create the first resort told to CNN in 2021 « They were like lobsters ».

Almost 300,000 plastic bottles are used in Malé every day. Most of the inhabited islands have a drinkable water system, produced by a desalination plant. However, most people prefer using water bottles.

Lots of Maldivian NGOs are sponsored and financed by big luxury hotel groups. Como Cocoa support Olive Ridley’s NGO for turtles protection. This entirely man-made resort island destroyed the whole reef by dredging sand all around, weakening other islands and killing all the original nature based here. To their rich clients , they offer sunbathing on a “silk-soft sand” beach, in an artificial lagoon which transformed all the coral reef to a graveyard.

In most of islands, a mosquito repellent made out of petrol and pesticides, is ubiquitously sprayed inside rooms and restaurants to kill mosquitoes. Scientific studies proved that this repellent has a dangerous impact on ecosystems and on natural mosquito killers like dragonflies and other pollinators. But on mosquitoes, it has actually no effect. They leave because of the smoke but come back right after, plus they become more resistant. Local people have a mirthless laugh by saying that despite the toxic smoke they can breath: this repellent is pointless.

Sonva started this greenwashing program 25 years ago. The couple managed to bring together personalities wishing to act for the environment: politicians, actors, big names of gastronomy and other stars of all kinds. They were supposed to brainstorm together, during an annual congress called “Slow Life Symposium”, about a way to offer responsible tourism. Obviously, this tourism is only aimed at an extremely privileged clientele who really don’t care about these issues and only wish to make the most of their privileges, to the detriment of the lives of other humans and every other living species.

My first exchanges with the manager of the marine biology center of a luxury resort sound like utopia. Their actions: replant corals with tourists, welcome the relocation of hundreds of colonies, maintain them, clean the beaches, educate customers, all in a more than enthusiastic tone, to deal with coral bleaching. After a few minutes of insistence, not everything is so nice anymore. She said that an internal and private report announces 60% success in the relocation of corals but no one can check the information. And this relocation is a way for the government to get all the land reclamations projects accepted. "It's not at all what I thought it would be. We are destroying everything. Hotel managers are thinking about how to increase profits in the next 50 years when in 50 years there will be no natural islands anymore, everything will have been killed. We only put small bandages on gaping wounds. We try to educate wealthy clients who could help change things, but no one cares. 90 % of Maldivian coral is dead. I have no hope in the future of this country as long as it's ruled by tourism and a capitalist system that doesn't care about the consequences of their actions.”

This marine biology center, officially attached to the resort, is in fact a NGO that does not receive any funding from the government or the hotel groups to carry out their actions and researches. The hotel welcomes researchers from all over the world. In exchange for accommodation on site, they have to work with the hotel customers and offer them scientific mediation activities so that they can claim their eco-labels.

Erosion is one of the main problems on the archipelago, accentuated by rising water level. To limit the effects, there are makeshift facilities on some islands. All construction debris are stored there to support the shore. On other islands, solutions are more drastic. The island of Giraavaru, Kaafu atoll, was originally inhabited by a Tamil population from southern India. This very first Maldivian community was evacuated from the island at the end of the 1960s and partly accommodated in Male because of the dangers of erosion, deemed too high by the government. Today it is the Four Season, a luxury resort at $2,500 a night which is spread over the whole island where erosion no longer seems to be a problem, offering a fitness room, spa, private swimming pools on the ocean, personal room service available 24/7 and all the accommodation for dreamy weddings and honeymoons.

Malé is a very dense island-city which brings together half of the Maldivian population in concrete buildings. The only shaded areas, in a city where the average daily temperature is 30 degrees and can go up to 40, are provided by some trees, which are rare outside parks. Amunee Magu Grand Avenue has 147 trees between 20 and 30 years old. They were planted by the people as part of the Gayyoom government's "One Million Trees" program. Afrah from ZeroWastesMaldives remembers planting one himself as a child. The current government has decided to cut them all to be able to pour concrete and rehabilitate the street, while this same government had promised not to remove them to avoid popular riots. Now that the trees have been cut, the government says that they will be moved to Kudagiri Island, a "Picnic Island", and replanted. But it is impossible to replant a 30-year-old tree. With this measure, the authorities seem to have forgotten the benefit of trees in improving air quality and regulating temperature, both of which are capital in the large cities.

Residents of cities, particularly Malé, pay 10 €/month (150 Rf) for garbage collection, which is sent entirely to the island of Thilafushi. Not everyone pays but the government company WAMCO still collects the garbage and it is hard work, badly paid and very understaffed. Often it involves ten floors to climb on foot to collect them because the buildings do not have spaces for the storage of garbage. According to the manager, some employees are paid 600 €/month, which would be below the country's legal minimum wage. According to Afrah from ZeroWaste Maldives, a good salary would be around 1,500 to 2,000 €/month to have a decent life in Maldives, which is an expensive country.
The plan was to install an incinerator for future waste. For the already existing mountain of waste, the project is to create layers of wastes and solid surface.

Maldives is a country of Mangroves. Even if many sites have been destroyed by land reclamation projects, there are still a hundred of them throughout the archipelago. They are essential for the food chain of the atolls. It is a natural silt filter (fine earth particles carried by the water) and resistant to sea water. However, despite requests and lack of information on this subject, only two mangroves sites have been classified as protected by the government. In the North and South Male Atoll, only one of these two mangroves remains, all the others have been destroyed for the development of tourism or trade. There is no longer any natural and wild land in this atoll. Mangroves are also very useful against natural accidents such as tsunamis and the regular strong storms of the Indian Ocean islands. Destroying them amounts to voluntarily breaking a natural barrier.

“A bridge for Prosperity”
The Greater Male Connectivity Project (GMCP) plans to connect Malé, Villingili, Gulhifallu and Thilafushi by concrete bridges, in the continuity of the one between Malé and Hulumalé. In addition to these bridges, a residential area is planned to accommodate several thousand homes. The project is financed by the Indian company AFCONS for up to 500 million dollars to counter the influence of China, even if the officially announced goal is to unclog the capital (initial project of Hulumalé). AFCONS proudly affirms the use of 20 marine craft, more than 2,000 employees and more than 150 engineers for the construction of this "India-Maldives Friendship Bridge".
“Once completed, the project will be the largest infrastructure project in the Maldives,” Maldives Foreign Minister Abdulla Shahid said in a statement in 2020.

Thulusdhoo is a small island famous for its fish drying warehouses, its many surf spots and its Coca-Cola factory made from desalinated seawater. Every year many tourists come here for a few months. Ahmed, originally from Malé, created the NGO Save Our Waves to campaign against the human destruction of the waves and moved to the island with his family to open a guesthouse and teach surfing. When they arrived, the island was only forests and beaches but were quickly replaced by concrete buildings. Like most islands, this one also had a big land reclamation project, to expand the habitable area and alter the natural currents of the island. According to him, the problem also comes from the population "All this development and modernization is what the population wants, without worrying about the impact it will have on our children. And everyone knows that a political vote can be bought for 5,000 Roufiyaa (300 €). People who need that money don't hesitate for a second."

The China-Maldives Friendship Bridge was funded by the Chinese government to connect Malé to Hulumalé, the neighboring island built to relieve congestion in the capital. It is the first inter-island bridge in the country and the door was then opened to other constructions with disastrous environmental and social consequences. Inaugurated in 2018, four years after the start of construction and almost 10 years of discussion before the project was completed. Its cost: 210 million dollars, including 126 million subsidized by China. The workers on this project were exclusively Chinese and the working conditions were very difficult in a complicated environment (waves, heat, coral reefs) with a demand for efficiency required in a limited time.

Net and trawl fishing is prohibited in Maldives, which makes it possible to keep an eye on the quantity of fish caught and to limit as much as possible catches of dolphins and sharks, whose fishing was banned in 2009 by the Nasheed government. Shark was never really consumed by the local population and was captured for the Asian market. On the other hand, turtle was one of the meat types eaten locally. However, the increase in the population caused by the fast development of tourism and the arrival of foreign workers quickly reduced the population of turtles and endangered various species which are now all protected.

Despite so-called regulation, trolling fishing does not seem to be sufficiently supervised. Tuna is the main species living in Maldivian waters. Despite its large consumption and the tons of catches per fishing session, the population of yellow-fin tuna in the Indian Ocean is doing well and is reproducing fast enough not to decrease. But to be able to catch it, fishermen must dive to catch another species of small fish, a favorite food for the tuna. The population density of those fish is decreasing very fast, forcing divers to go deeper and deeper to find them, sometimes down to 70 meters.

With former President Nasheed's goal of carbon neutrality, Maldives expended solar systems to replace electric generators that run on gas. Foreign companies like Swimsol are setting up panels offshore to supply mainly seaside resorts and hotels, allowing them to obtain ecological labels. On local islands, everything is done to stop the access to this energy for inhabitants. Badeeu tells me that “Energy is very expensive on the islands. I wanted to put panels but I was told that the maximum quota of solar panels on the island had already been reached. Each island has a maximum number of panels to ensure that most people continue to use electricity from the generators. Except that when I look at the island, I don't see any solar panels! "

“Each Maldives island is like a different country. If you were born in Malé you stay in Malé, it is very difficult to get a plot of land on another island. But I would like to leave Malé, it is unlivable. And I’m scared for my children, it is very easy to fall into drugs. I told them that I couldn't leave but that if they wish, they can go abroad, life will be better for them. » Juma tells me, a resident of Malé.
This island-city has developed over the past 30 years, without any urban plan, creating an anxiety-provoking environment, without vegetation or pedestrian areas where housing is dilapidated and expensive. Hulumalé, its neighboring little sister, was entirely built to relieve congestion in Malé and provide decent housing for the inhabitants, but the price of real estate is even higher than in the capital.

Malé has about 150,000 inhabitants, a third of the total population of the Maldives. With a high percentage of sulfide in oil, the proximity of Thilafushi where plastic and toxic materials are burned and piled up, the ever-growing population density (population doubled in 30 years) and the lack of natural spaces, the atoll air is highly polluted.

Even if the government and several local companies have made climate change a priority with a four-year project (from 2009 to 2013, financed by the European Union to the tune of €7.20 million), nothing is done and the actions taken by the government tend to go in the opposite direction. This project aimed to make the Maldives “the first biosphere reserve in the world”. Instead of that, the government is digging Maldives’ grave.