* Maldives' Disorder
-
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. -
Until 2019, before Former President Nasheed, inhabitants couldn’t be in contact with tourists. The presence of almost naked strangers was not acceptable for the religious government. Nowadays, tourists and locals are living on the same islands but are using different beaches.
-
Like most of young Maldivian, Samy can’t find her place in this society. Jobs and life opportunities come from tourism only. When I met with her, she told me she was on a break, never saying she had experienced a burn-out. She only said that she had a tough moment in her life and that she wanted to take time for herself after spending all her life taking care of others. She was working at the “Kids club” in different resorts.
“ I like my job because with children, you can do everything, join every activities for tourists. But I would like to work in a different section, at the Customer relationship. The problem is that I’m stuck with a “kid” label and it’s hard to change ”.
When I met her again a few weeks later, she told me that she just got a new job, at the kids club of a new resort in the south of the country. It is hard to know if she is happy or not. Actually, it is not even a question, she has to work. Every month, she sends money to her large family. What I am sure of is that she will live on this new island with her karaoke equipment. Indeed, singing is her passion. -
-
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 ».
-
Every island has its souvenirs shops with all kind of products « Made in Maldives ». But the truth is that everything come from China or Thailand. Rasheed owns one of this shops in Guraidhoo. He opens it at night and when tourists guides are coming for an excursion on a local island. He explained to me that nothing is made here. Only corals are either picked up on the beach or harvested under water during diving expeditions, but that’s it.
-
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.
-
“At Soneva, nature has always been the inspiration for our innovations. Our organizational structure is inspired by the links between the different planets.”
-
Ahmed Badeeu worked at the municipality of the island of Guraidhoo on a less dangerous mosquito repellent, in partnership with Soneva who financed the project. Soneva suddenly withdrew from the project, taking the progress of the research with them to partner with Biogent. The "eco-tourism" giant boasts of having eradicated mosquitoes on its resorts islands, thanks to a system of traps that are entirely respectful of the environment and intends to "serve as a model for the rest of the world". More than 500 traps that simulate human presence have been installed to achieve the zero mosquito target, on the islands where the pioneer of luxury tourism is located.
-
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.
-
Afruz arrived from Calcutta (India) in June 2022 on the island of Guraidhoo hoping for a better salary. But ever since she started working as a waitress at a beach cafe, she has never had a day off. She works 77 hours a week, earning $450 a month, and her employer keeps her passport. She does not dare to claim her rights and ask for one day off, afraid of losing her job. She hopes to be able to join a resort where working conditions are more regulated, even for foreign workers.
"I'm tired, since June, the only day I haven't worked is because I was sick. I have no social life because I work until 11 p.m. and I am alone in the house where I sleep. To have internet, I have to take the coffee internet box to my room, otherwise I would be completely cut off from the world”. She spends a lot of time watching Bollywood on her phone and chatting with her family back in India. According to the latest news, she was taken care of by her embassy, following a complaint filled because her employer was no longer paying her a salary and had kept her passport. -
-
Afrah and his wife Hamsha created the NGO Zero Wastes Maldives in 2019. Afrah is a mechanical engineer and Hamsha an architect. He worked for a company which installs solar panels, mainly on the resorts. Some are set up to generate the energy needed for the desalination plants, but solar energy only cover 20 % of the needs to run them. The rest runs on generators. They fight on a daily basis to try and reduce the population's consumption of waste, and the government lack of management.
-
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.
-
The island of Thilafushi was chosen to receive waste, but the initial project was far too ambitious. It could not work out with the fast increase of local population, foreign population and the development of tourism. The island found itself overstretched without reliable and efficient means of management put in place by local authorities and foreign investors. Nothing have been done to limit the consumption of packaging (the vast majority of products consumed is imported from India, Sri Lanka or Emirates). Even when the government seems to be interested in the problem by installing incinerators, the staff is not able to follow suit. The manager of WAMCO (governmental wastes agency) regrets the non-qualification of the Maldivians, himself included. He spends a lot of time training on his own and regularly has to bring in experts from abroad to train his teams. The same is true with machine parts: when a part breaks down, the entire production process is stopped for three months before receiving the new part, which is not manufactured in the Maldives.
-
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. -
Ibrahim is taking care of a mangrove on Huraa island (Maldives, Malé Atoll) without any help, for free, beside his job as a driver for tourists. He knows it very well, since his childhood, and sees it dying everyday.
-
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.
-
"Coral Restoration" is the headline on the webpage of Gulhifalhu's land reclamation project, contracted by Boskalis to relocate the industrial port of Male. The government thus announces that it knows the environmental consequences of backfilling and sand dredging, and proposes as a miracle solution to relocate the corals and set them up around three resorts, namely Soneva, the Four Seasons of Huraa and Sheraton Full Moon.
Since June 2020, 5,000 branching coral colonies and 2,500 coral beds have been affected, with no success reports available. -
Humay founded the NGO Save Maldives to try to counter the major ecocides that are occuring throughout the country. “The arrival of tourism was a big positive in the beginning. This has made it possible to enhance the landscape and the various local living species. The problem basically lies in the greed and enrichment of investors and politicians at the expense of everything else. The country is over-indebted, yet it continues to engage in land reclamation work without having the finances to build homes for the local population. The sand is therefore either dredged for nothing, the new land abandoned, or sold to the hotel sector. Many people contact us anonymously to let us know what is happening on other islands. It's sad because it shows that a lot of people know what is going on, and that it’s really a problem, but they are scared to join us. »
Save Maldives and ZeroWastes Maldives are among the few NGOs not receiving any financial support from the hotel industry. -
“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.
-
Moussa works for the MTCC, the governmental maritime transport network company. Before that he used to work as a handyman on container ships that traveled the world to transport goods. The salary was better, but the working conditions were difficult and the distance from his family was too much of a heavy weight. He is proud to tell me that he only married once and still is with his wife. In this country, couples are divorcing between five and nine times before the age of 40.
Today he is tired of his work. He lives in Malé with his family, whom he only sees on weekends. His daughter is studying medicine in Cuba, studies that they would never have had the chance to finance without a scholarship. -
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.
-
Open waste collection site on the shore.
The sign at the entrance prohibits the throwing of waste in this area. With no other means of collecting waste being put in place, the inhabitants have to come there and burn their packaging (organic waste is generally thrown directly into the water). The hotels’ staff arrives in carts full of plastic bottles which they dump and leave as they are.
“With the 2004 tsunami, we saw a mountain of waste arriving without understanding what was behind it. Only four people from the villages understood that it was a wave and that it was going to hit the island at any time”, attest the inhabitants. -
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. -
When I first meet Illyas, he immediately introduces himself as a former heroin user. "It's the biggest health problem in the Maldives, and it's affecting users increasingly young." There is only one rehab center in Male with unqualified staff and an extremely high relapse rate. "Brown Sugar" came with the increasing number of tourists in the 90s, as someone is telling us at the Narcotics Anonymous meeting I was invited to.
After 10 years of consumption, Illyas left for a cure in Chennai, India, in a center run by women. He hasn't touched any drugs "not even cough syrup" for 10 years, thanks to his new NA (Narcotic Anonymous) family. "Cigarettes are the only thing I allow myself." He has been working for the Red Cross for a few years, and despite his desire to communicate about this scourge, has never spoken to his 18-year-old son about what he has experienced. "Drug use is a taboo, it’s impossible to talk about it." -
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.