Category: Environment

Comment: UN Message for World Environment Day

Nearly 20 years after the 1992 Earth Summit, the world is once again on the road to Rio – the site of the June 2012 UN Conference on Sustainable Development.

Much has changed in the past two decades, geopolitically and environmentally.  Hundreds of millions of people in Asia, Latin America – and, increasingly, in Africa – have risen from poverty.

Yet, evidence is also accumulating of profound and potentially irreversible changes in the ability of the planet to sustain our progress.

Rapid economic growth has come with costs that traditionally rarely feature in national accounting. These range from atmospheric and water pollution to degraded fisheries and forests, all of which impact prosperity and human well-being.

The theme of World Environment Day this year, “Forests: Nature at Your Service”, emphasizes the multi-trillion dollar value of these and other ecosystems to society – especially the poor.

Despite growing global awareness of the dangers of environmental decline – including climate change, biodiversity loss and desertification – progress since the Earth Summit has been too slow.  We will not build a just and equitable world unless we give equal weight to all three pillars of sustainable development – social, economic and environmental.

To sustainably reduce poverty, guarantee food and nutrition security and provide decent employment for growing populations, we must make the most intelligent use of our natural capital.

India, the global host of World Environment Day in 2011, is among a growing number of countries working to address the pressures of ecological change.

It is also helping to pioneer a better assessment of the economic value of nature-based services, with the assistance of the United Nations Environment Programme and the World Bank.

India’s Rural Employment Act and the country’s encouragement of renewable energy are significant examples of how to scale up green growth and accelerate the transition to a green economy.

No single day can transform development onto a sustainable path. But on the road to Rio +20, this year’s World Environment Day can send a message that those with influence in government and the private sector can – and must – take the necessary steps that will fulfil the promise of the Earth Summit.

The global public is watching, and expects nothing less.

Ban Ki-moon is the United Nations secretary general.

All comment pieces are the sole view of the author and do not reflect the editorial policy of Minivan News. If you would like to write an opinion piece, please send proposals to [email protected]

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Champa Moosa “an environmental criminal”, claims EPA, while police interrogate authority’s former Director General

The Environmental Protection Authority (EPA) has labelled local business tycoon Mohamed ‘Champa’ Moosa an “environmental criminal” for irreversibly damaging the island of Thun’bafushi and the marine ecosystem of Thun’bafalhu.

The EPA on Thursday fined Moosa the maximum penalty of Rf100 million (US$6.5 million) for conducting dredging and reclamation works in the area without an Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA).

Director-General of the EPA Mohamed Zuhair has reportedly resigned over the matter. Furthermore, Police Sub-Inspector Ahmed Shiyam confirmed to Minivan News that Zuhair had been taken in for questioning regarding an undisclosed investigation. Zuhair was not responding at time of press.

Director of the EPA Ibrahim Naeem told Minivan News the area had been irreversibly damaged and a large reef habitat destroyed.

Sharks left in a foot of tepid water

“This was originally a reef ecosystem with a small sand bank in the middle, but he has been dredging the island without any clearance and the changes are now irreversible,” Naeem said.

After three surveys of the area, the EPA had assessed the damage as amounting to Rf2,230,293,566 (US$144.6 million), not including the impact of sedimentation from the dredging which can smother coral kilometres from the site.

A foreign consultant who was involved in surveying the island told Minivan News that the area “seems to have been used as a dumping ground.”

“There were what looked like hundreds of used car batteries, waste metals and oil drums leeching into the marine environment,” the consultant said.

“We were looking at the effect of the dredging on sedimentation, and there were no water quality tests done. But you can just imagine what it would have been like with all the batteries and waste metals.”

Images of the island obtained by Minivan News showed discarded piles of rubbish and batteries, old earthmoving machinery rusting in the sun, and half a dozen reef sharks in a tank containing a foot of tepid water.

While the unauthorised reclamation works are several years old and have been a subject of EPA concern for some time, Naeem explained that the procedure and mechanism for calculating and issuing fines was only established in February this year.

The Environmental Protection Act already states the requirement for an EIA assessment and the illegality of conducting works without acquiring one, but does not outline how this should be penalised. Naeem noted that the EPA had lost court battles on the specifics prior to the introduction of the new framework in February.

“We now calculate environmental damage caused by [unauthorised] dredging at Rf65,000 (US$4200) per square metre,” Naeem said, “but Rf100,000 million is the maximum fine.”

Fines were open to appeal and negotiation, Naeem said, suggesting that “this is likely to happen in this case.”

Piles of rubble and old machinery

Moosa could also request the EPA resurvey the damaged area, Naeem  said, although he noted that the EPA had already surveyed the area three times, most recently in March.

Ali Rilwan of Environmental NGO Bluepeace expressed concern that the EPA’s previous issuing of fines for environmental damage was sporadic, and those that were issued were often unpaid “or the day afterwards, pardon is given.”

The EPA’s lack of independence from the executive also “raised doubts” as to whether fines were politically motivated – Moosa’s business interests include private broadcaster DhiTV, which the ruling Maldivian Democratic Party (MDP) has previously criticised for being heavily aligned to the opposition.

“The Environmental Act does not conflict with the Constitution, but the EPA should be an independent body like the Human Rights Commission,” Rilwan said.

“It should be an independent agency autonomous from the government staffed by academic professionals, rather than civil servants and ministers. Because of the current setup, we do have doubts [over its independence].”

A building on the island used for storage

Naeem responded that while he did not know if there was a political element to the decision to fine Moosa a week before the government was seeking to push through major economic reforms in parliament, “what we do know is that Champa has definitely done this without a license or any form of clearance.”

“I don’t know if there is a political element – but he has committed a crime, and we have to take our responsibility towards the environment seriously,” he said.

Minivan News contacted Champa Moosa for comment but he had not responded at time of press.

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“If you’re looking to soak up some sun in the Maldives, this isn’t the island you want to be on”

The Maldives’ five-star resorts have turned the Thilafushi reef into a seven-kilometre long dumpsite, Al Jazeera has reported.

“Environmental activists say the bad practices adopted there are causing contaminants to seep into the Indian Ocean nation’s once pristine sea water, and then into the food chain,” journalist Steve Chao reported.

“If you’re looking to soak up some sun in the Maldives, this isn’t the island you want to be on.”

Now a dumpsite for the country’s 1200 islands, Thilafushi hardly resembles the unspoiled coral reef it was 20 years ago, Chao reports, with little of the waste recycled, composted or treated as required by law.

“Nobody is managing this – the tourism industry is not ethically or morally doing their work,” a Maldivian environmental activist tells the news network, adding that every tourist to the country generates 7.2 kilograms of garbage a day.

“The only treatment the mountains of trash gets is Bangladeshi wokers picking through looking for recyclables goods to sell,” Chao reports. “We learn they are also paid by the government to burn the garbage, sending untold toxins into the air. We’ve been here only a few minutes but already the smoke is stinging the eyes and there’s an acrid taste in the mouth.”

Speaking to Al Jazeera, Environment Minister Mohamed Aslam claimed the international community had for years promised to build proper facilities to handle the waste, “but the world does not wiit for these proceedures and processes to be completed. I think this needs to be fast tracked.”

“Although the Maldives is one of the top destination for international tourists, the country remains very poor,” Chao noted.

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Comment: Climate change a real and imminent threat to the Maldives

Climate change is a very real and imminent threat to the Maldives, the smallest nation in Asia, which lost 20 islands during the 2004 tsunami. Since then, the government has gone strictly carbon neutral in a bid to protect its population from the rising sea.

British Foreign Secretary William Hague has described climate change as “perhaps the 21st century’s biggest foreign policy challenge”.

He has stressed that “a world which is failing to respond to climate change is one in which the values embodied in the United Nations will not be met”.

Indeed, the UN Charter makes clear that a central purpose of that organisation is to “achieve international co-operation in solving international problems of an economic, social, cultural or humanitarian character”.

Climate change is just such a problem – and its impacts and costs fall disproportionally on developing countries. That is deeply unfair. So it is only right that in Cancun last December the 16th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change reaffirmed the commitment from developed countries in Copenhagen in December 2009 jointly to mobilise $100bn of climate finance a year by 2020, to address the adaptation needs of developing countries and help them to limit their carbon emissions.

The UK takes this commitment very seriously and recognises the need for urgent action. The British Government has therefore allocated £2.9bn of Overseas Development Assistance (ODA) to international climate finance for the period 2011/12 to 2014/15 (including our Fast Start commitment). This will be administered through our International Climate Fund (ICF), which has just been formally established. We expect to spend about 50 percent of the total on adaptation in poor and vulnerable countries, with around 30% for work to reduce carbon emissions and 20% for forestry.

We have three overall priorities for ICF funding, which we will deliver through both bilateral and multilateral channels in a way which maximises its impact and value for money:

  • To show that building low carbon, climate resilient growth at scale is both feasible and desirable;
  • To support adaptation in poor countries and help build an effective international framework on climate change;
  • To drive innovation, creating new partnerships with the private sector to support low carbon climate resilient growth

The ICF will also fund the climate element of an Advocacy Fund to support the poorest countries to take part more effectively in international negotiations; this will be formally established later this year.

This UK funding will play an important role in helping to mobilise ambitious global action on climate change. But the UK is the only major donor so far to have made specific finance commitments up to 2015. More is needed to meet the Copenhagen commitment of $100bn a year by 2020. We look to other donors too to make significant and ambitious financial pledges, and we look to business to play an important role, since we expect the target to be reached through a mix of public and private finance.

As the Stern Review in 2006 made clear, the clock is ticking. With every passing year, the global cost of effective action to tackle climate change grows greater. The time to act is now.

John Rankin is the British High Commissioner to the Maldives and Sri Lanka.

All comment pieces are the sole view of the author and do not reflect the editorial policy of Minivan News. If you would like to write an opinion piece, please send proposals to [email protected]

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Maldives’ oil spend spikes in line with world oil prices

Saudi Arabian oil exporter Aramco has expressed unease about the global economy as oil prices have continued to rise, as unrest drops the rate of production in Africa and the Middle East.

Prices reached US$124 a barrel yesterday, after peaking earlier this month at US$127. Worldwide output fell 700,000 barrels in March amid ongoing political turmoil in Libya, Yemen, Syria, Nigeria and the Ivory Coast.

CEO of Aramco Khalid al-Falih told an industry gathering in South Korea that “We are not comfortable with oil prices where they are today… I am concerned about the impact it could have on the global economy.”

The Maldivian economy is dependent on oil to such an extent that is spends a quarter of its GDP on it – US$245 million – the vast majority on marine diesel, making imported energy one of the single largest drains on the country’s economy.

Customs documents obtained by Minivan News in January showed that Maldives was spending almost US$100,000 more per day more on fossil fuels than it was in the summer of 2010. At that time, oil was US$86 a barrel.

By the same calculations but with today’s oil price, the Maldives is paying an additional US$450,000 per day for oil compared to summer prices last year.

In Male’, the increase in price has compelled the State Electric Company Limited (STELCO) to increase the fuel surcharge component of its electricity prices, with Haveeru reporting a STELCO official as acknowledging an increase in complaints about the cost of their bills price. The fuel surcharge reached Rf 1.41 per kilowatt hour in March, dropping slightly to Rf 1.27 in April.
“The rise in fuel prices leads to an increase in the fuel surcharge, which eventually push the electricity charges up,” the official said.
The Maldives has meanwhile pledged to become carbon neutral by 2020, but little has been done to wean the country from the growing financial burden of its oil addiction.

In a previous interview with Minivan News, President Nasheed’s Energy Advisor Mike Mason suggested that spiralling oil costs could prove to be a strong argument for a return to sailing.

“I think there is a huge opportunity to take a knowledge of sail, wind and current – the thinking that has served the Maldives well for 2000 years – and apply modern technology such as solar to create a new transport paradigm. A sailing vessel with a modern hull, utilising modern technology can reach 30-40 knots, and would greatly reduce the reliance on diesel,” Mason said at the time.

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Visit to Fares-Maathoda shows challenge of decentralised development

In the final part of a special report from the island of Fares-Maathoda, Minivan News looks at the challenges for communities developing beyond Male’s glance as they attempt to switch to decentralised governance and overcome their natural vulnerabilities.

Sitting in Gaafu Dhaalu Atoll, the conjoined landmasses making up the island of Fares-Maathoda present an environment that has seen little of the economic and infrastructure changes witnessed in the population hubs in North Male’ atoll.

Yet like everywhere else in the Maldives, the formation of island and Atoll councils following nationwide local elections in February 2011 has raised new challenges to bring about change on a more decentralised basis.

However, some opposition politicians believe that the government was “not fully prepared” in its plans to devolve power locally, and that has caused friction between the government and local councils over what exactly their roles and responsibilities are in relation to overseeing potential changes.

For the residents of Fares-Maathoda and the five-member council elected to serve them, these changes include a proposal to use aid funds from Denmark to try and offset continued flooding resulting from drainage and waste management issues as part of wider development aims.

Ibarahim Shareef, spokesperson and deputy leader for the Dhivehi Rayyithunge Party (DRP) told Minivan News that he believed a combination of a lack of experience among elected councillors and obstruction by central government was limiting the roles of individually elected councils to oversee and deal with projects such as development.

“There is disagreement over the role of councils and what duties are being issued to them. Our country is disintegrating around us,” Shareef claimed, accepting that divisions between the present and previous leaderships of his own party had added to the partisan atmosphere of the country’s political backdrop.

“We should get all the parties including the government and opposition groups to stick together and try and resolve the differences like this issue.”

Speaking earlier this month during a visit to Fares-Maathoda, two islands that were linked together in the 1990s by reclaiming area between them – a move that exacerbated flooding problems – UN Resident Coordinator Andrew Cox said he believed that environmental and development facing the country required cooperation from all stakeholders in light of decentralised government.

“What seems to be the case at the moment is that the decentralised structures [island and Atoll councils] are developing and that’s fine. But what that means at the moment is that until things become clearer in some of the areas where we need to work, we need to stay closely connected with everybody. Yet we appreciate the need for strong coordination,” he said.

“In the end, you need the right environment if you are going to attract large-scale funding. In actual fact for the money to come to the Maldives there needs to be a favourable environment for that and even more so there needs to be a good investment environment, because that’s the way that you are going to do large-scale projects.”

Cox was on Fares-Maathoda alongside representatives from the Ministry of Finance and Treasury, the Ministry of Housing and Environment, the National Office and the United Nations Office for Project Services (UNOPS) to meet with local councillors and outline how Danish donor aid for funding climate change adaptation would be allocated on the island.

Pointing to a sea-wall development riddled with flags, displaying the yellow of the MDP on one side and the blue of the DRP on the other, Cox suggested that was a powerful reflection of the country’s partisan political functioning and the challenges it created for decentralising aid distribution.

“You have the blue on one side and the yellow on the right, which typifies the Maldives more than anything else,” he added.

However, Cox claimed that rather than acting as a test for the viability of other collaborations with recently appointed local councillors in delivering aid, Fares-Maathoda represented the need for “development best practice” and how best to try and mitigate detrimental environment and economic factors over partisan thinking.

“In the end, people involved in a project need to be involved in its decision making. That’s the bottom line, so frankly I think if you succeed, you succeed and it’s good for development and everyone who is involved can take credit,” he said. “But if you fail, it’s important to know why you failed. Then you try and reflect that back when you expand an approach outwards than you better find a way of taken advantage of that knowledge and understanding and don’t do it again.”

However, Ibarahim Shareef said he believed that in opting to decentralise power following February’s elections, President Mohamed Nasheed and his fellow MDP members had been “shocked” by the number of island councils seats that fell to opposition parties like the DRP.

Shareef claimed that he believed the government was now aiming to try and centralise power in an apparent reversal of its original intentions.

“Local people have been in a long struggle for democracy, yet some are now questioning the wisdom of supporting democratic reform,” he said. “They have not got empowerment at the level they expected.”

Shareef said that despite these uncertainties regarding the exact role of local councils, everyone involved in the process of decentralisation needed to work together to set out what powers councillors did and did not have in order to function properly.

“It is in everyone’s interests to ensure they are working properly,” he claimed.

In a bid to try and help coordinate the development projects undertaken by local councils such as those bought forward by UN aid, the President’s Office announced the formation of seven national offices back in March that it claimed were not related between some isolated disputes with local councils.

Speaking from Fares-Maathoda during the UN visit, Mohamed Shareef, Deputy Minister of State for the Upper South Province national office, claimed that government coordination remained vital to ensure all councillors are sufficiently trained to oversee development and aid in the future.

Speaking to Minivan News, Mohamed Shareef said he believed that criticism of the national offices stemmed from incorrect presumptions that the government was acting against its own decentralisation plans by giving the president more power over the country.

To try and offset these criticisms the national office has said it is offering training programmes across the country in places like Thinadoo and Addu City that aim to provide information to councillors and outline their responsibilities.

“Councillors have come from many different walks of life, but many haven’t been in administration or management, so they are very new to these procedures and understanding them,” said Shareef. “They keep saying that there are no procedures, but it is just a matter of understanding what the procedures are. So we have to keep on running training programmes. The government has a very extensive programme to try and make the councillors and the public aware of the system.”

With the councils now in place, Shareef said that these training programmes would be vital to try and ensure the success of decentralisation. However, he accepted that there was a notable difference of opinion between whether more details and information should have been given to candidates and the public before electing councillors or whether the system should be fleshed out afterwards.

Despite criticisms that more education for the public and councillors on the exact purpose of decentralisation in the Maldives should have been in place before voting began, the national office claimed that it believed the best way – as has happened – was to start the programme and learn along the way.

“I think if we had earlier tried to make people understand what [the government] were trying to do, it would have been a difficult process. On the other hand, if you have bought the system and make everyone learn by experience it might have been easier for us – it could be debated either way,” Shareef said. “We were in need of immediate change that was for sure. So we wanted a change to be implemented and it was done very quick.”

In terms of main challenges facing national offices like those in the Upper South Province, Shareef said that the cost of running five member councils across the country was definately a concern.

“We have a very poor income and the country is very small in terms of people and resources. We can discover new resources in terms of tourism but the challenge lies in the expense of bring about these changes [local councils]. It is an expensive process.”

Shareef claimed that the national councils would ultimately like to see more responsibility being taken by local councillors in dealing directly with donor agencies such as the UN over development and aid projects, while it held a light coordination role in instead.

“This would allow the direct impact [of these funds] to be felt more closely by the councils. Otherwise we should have a major role. It’s not very easy for the government agencies,” he said. “In terms of being more responsible, I think the councils can very much have a role in making the maximum use of aid coming in.”

Mohamed Shareef added that the belief of the national councils was that training projects would be at the heart of granting more development roles to local councillors in the future.

“The vision of the government is that we are going to have a very big leap in terms of development by having decentralisation. So the councils need to be very responsible and capable if they want to take up these challenges,” he said. “It all depends on how capable the councils are. In one way it’s a big relief for the government that there are councils and governors who are interested in dealing with them. For the government, it doesn’t make it very easy, but it’s the way they want to go forward I guess.”

Ultimately, Shareef said that the main plan in the long-term for each council would be to have them become more technical and development orientated rather than trying to serve a particular party political interest.
“That was the stand with which the councils came into their position, but still we have some way to go to get the councils to realise they are a technical and development body and not a political body.”

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Fisheries ministry accepts need for regional collaboration in changing marketplace

Maldivian authorities say they are ready to join the Indian Ocean Tuna Commission (IOTC) despite initial reluctance, as a changing agricultural situation within local waters requires a more active role in outlining possible quotas and regulations.

Hussain Rasheed Hassan, Minister of State for Fisheries and Agriculture told Minivan News that with the Maldives currently responsible for fishing between a quarter to a fifth of the Indian Ocean’s skipjack tuna catch, the country was now waiting for parliamentary approval to join the tuna commission, which serves as an intergovernmental agricultural organisation.

Having spent two years collaborating with the IOTC regarding possible membership into the group, Hassan claimed that the move was not in contradiction to planned aims of selling more sustainable fish supplies or outlawing harvesting species such as sharks. Instead he claimed it reflected wider aims to work under guidelines set out in an EU initiative to combat illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing (IUU).

“In the past, we have been very reluctant to become a member of the IOTC, I guess for a number of reasons,” he said. “One [reason] is that we were afraid that by becoming a member, the IOTC will dictate how much fish [the Maldives] can harvest.

As a major stakeholder in supplying skipjack tuna from the Indian Ocean, the state minister claimed that there had in the past been fears that becoming a full IOTC would allow other to enforce quotas on the size of the Maldives’ catch of the fish leading to some hesitation by government in acting in this way.

However, Hassan claimed that the situation has changed very much of late in regards to capturing Indian Ocean tuna, particularly in terms of species such as yellowfin that he said were considered to be at stake throughout the region.

“Our hand line fishermen are targeting these fish. But in the Indian Ocean as a whole, these species are considered overexploited. There was talk that we should have a fish quota for that and we want to be included in these discussions and decision making,” he said. “If we are outside this process we will not be able to say what we want and we will not be able to influence the decision making process of the IOTC. That is not a very good position for the Maldives.”

Hassan claimed that the obtaining membership to the IOTC was also a key requirement of meeting the European IUU regulations, which he said were being sought by major import markets for tuna like the EU and demand cooperation with regional fisheries management organisations.

“It is a market demand really. A lot of our buyers are telling us that we are a major player and should become a member of the IOTC,” he added. “They want us to ensure management measures are put in place and they want us to have a more proactive role in the organisation.”

Just last year, the Maldives government had courted threats from some conservation groups that the country’s fisheries faced being boycotted by certain major UK retailers over a decision to adopt long line fishing alongside the perceived environmentally friendly, yet lower yield, pole and line methods.

The use of the long line system has itself continued to divide opinion with groups like the Maldives Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) claiming last March that there were both “good and bad implications” to adopting the practice.

“It is obvious that long line fishing will definitely catch some un-targeted fishes, like sharks and turtles,” EPA director Ibrahim Naeem said at the time.

By the end of March last year, the Cabinet opted to allow long line fishing of yellowfin tuna and bigeye tuna for Maldivian vessels after discussing a paper submitted by the Ministry of Fisheries and Agriculture claiming such a move would improve yields from the fisheries sector, which has worsened significantly since 2006.

Senior Research Officer at the Ministry of Fisheries and Agriculture, Hussein Sinan, said at the time that long line fishing was “far better for targeting yellowfin and bigeye tuna.”

Hassan claimed that a key interest of the government in looking to long line methods was to try and ensure that the 15,000 to 16,000 people estimated to be employed directly within the fisheries sector remained employed.  The state minister added that it was therefore vital to ensure that effective management was put in place around the region to ensure sustainable prospects for fishing.

“We have been a pole and line fishing nation for at least a thousand years, so we cannot afford to give up our interest in this fishing and our culture. So we have got to maintain this for the foreseeable future,” he said. “Unless we can provide alternative and better employment opportunities for people we must remain a significant fishing nation.”

In order to provide the best price from fishermen, Hassan said that adding value to fish being caught in the country was not just linked to processing, but also in the quality of the produce from the way it has been caught.

“There may be an environmental value that you can add to it. I believe that having a sustainable pole and line fishery we are adding value [to the sector],” he said. “There is a huge demand for pole and line fish in the European market, especially the UK. For canned tuna there is a huge demand for pole and line fish and the reason is that the UK buyers have seen how sustainable and environmentally friendly the way we are catching it is. It is small scale and has very insignificant impact on the environment.”

Hassan said that although the government was limited in the amount of financial support it could offer fishermen to help try and manage more sustainable and added value fishing, the Maldives was at the same time working to introduce long line fishing through licensing agreements.

According to the state minister, these agreements have already led to foreign long line fishing in the Maldives being stopped last April.

While Hassan said that there was after this point no legal foreign fishing using long line methods in the country, he added there had also been a loss of opportunity for local business, where fish was being caught on licence and then processed and exported.

“What we are trying to do – and it is in the government manifesto – is to try and encourage the private sector to establish a local long line fleet. So the government is not buying vessels and supplying them, but we are encouraging private parties to acquire oats and start a long line operation,” he said.

Foreigners would therefore continue to be allowed to work on fishing vessels in the country under contract, but the boats themselves would required to be Maldivian owned and managed.

As part of this wider long line pledge, Hassan claimed that authorities were calling on a number of measures to try and prevent creatures that are not allowed to be caught and harvested such as sharks being taken from the seas by accident.

The state minister said that long line fishermen were purposefully being made to aim below 60 metres under the water where sharks and other outlawed creatures were not so abundant and would ensure that the practices were being monitored as required under international standards.

“We are very confident that this will mitigate the by catch issues and we will change regulations if necisary based on the outcomes and results of our long line fishing,” he said. “we are a relatively resource poor country. There is a huge potential under the [60 metre] thermaclime, which is yellowfin tuna and bigeye tuna that right now we are not targeting through hand and line fishing.”

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Hudhufushi lease renewed

The Tourism Ministry has renewed the lease for Hudhufushi in Lhaviyani Atoll despite the resort island’s owner owing more than US$85 million in unpaid rent.

According to a 2009 audit report, Hudhufushi’s leasee Abdul Rauf owed US$57.7 million in unpaid rent to the government going back to 2002, the majority of the amount accumulated fines from years of non-payment.

The lease rent owned by the Hudhufushi resort is one of the government’s largest debtors in the tourism sector, and was noted in both the tourism ministry and trade ministry’s audit reports for 2007.

Under the original 35 year lease agreement signed between Rauf and the government in 2000, the resort was to open on June 30, 2002.

Former Auditor General Ibrahim Naseem, dismissed by parliament last year days after ordering past and present government ministers to submit to an audit of their assets, had recommended repossessing the island and establishing a mechanism to take legal action against tax evasion.

His audit suggested that at least Rf117 million (US$910,000) of the amount was recoverable.

Local media this week reported that the debt had climbed to US$85 million, and that the government had renewed the lease under a new agreement stating that the amount would be paid back starting from the 11th year of the agreement.

In addition, the agreement requires two payments of US$750,000 before June 1 and December 1 of this year, local newspaper Haveeru reported, or it will be terminated.

Cofounder of local environmental NGO Bluepeace, Ali Rilwan, has meanwhile claimed that the island forms a natural bay that is home to rays and baby sharks, and was “a very important ecological site.”

“The development will cause a lot of disturbance – there was a lot of controversy even at the beginning on the process,” he said. “There were no studies before the island was awarded and it has not been subject to an environmental impact assessment.”

Rilwan suggested that in such instances the government should have provision to exchange an island for another, to allow the preservation of ecological sites such as Hudhufushi.

“There are only three islands in the Maldives that are listed as protected, at least on paper,” he said. “Hudhufushi has a mangrove area, which is a carbon sink – these are mentioned in the government’s carbon report. Half the mangroves in the Maldives have been reclaimed in the last 30-40 years.”

“Ecotourism sites such as these are rare in the Maldives and can generate an income as they make for wonderful photographs,” he said.

Minivan News contacted the tourism ministry for comment and was referred to Deputy Minister Ismail Yasir, but he was not responding at time of press.

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Fear and acclimatisation in Fares-Maathoda

In the first part of a special report from the island of Fares-Maathoda, Minivan News looks at the challenges for communities developing beyond Male’s glance as they attempt to switch to decentralised governance and overcome their natural vulnerabilities.

If the rate of development in the Maldives could be measured in the availability of Lavazza-branded espresso, then the conjoined islands of Fares-Maathoda in the Gaafu Dhaalu Atoll, while offering a very warm welcome, remain an instant coffee type-of-place.

With its sparsely populated community estimated at about 1000 people, the island is dense with jungle vegetation that rests alongside inhabited and incomplete homes, while crabs on the beach nestle between piles of coconut husk, used food wrapping and milk cartons amidst views of an apparently endless blue horizon.

The relatively unique geography of the islands could be said to reflect a wealth of challenges facing the wider country regarding waste management, coastal protection and economic development.

Since being formed back in the 1990’s via reclaimed land over a shallow passage of water linking the two islands in an attempt to create a small craft harbour for its residents, the UN has cited concerns from Fares-Maathoda’s residents that flooding has been made worse and far more frequent as a result.

While the islands may not specifically serve as a microcosm for the nation’s delicate beauty and democratic reform process, UN Resident Coordinator Andrew Cox said he believed that Fares-Maathoda was very typical in reflecting the Maldives’ vulnerability to natural elements as well as the development needs of its people.

“This counts as a vulnerable island; vulnerable economically and all the other issues that come along with that,” he said. “People make their money off fishing here and there are not a lot of other options or a strong tourism industry in the area. So you don’t get people earning money and bringing income in that way. One of the things that research shows is that islands or communities do very well if their livelihoods are good and if they are well organised.”

Since coming to power, President Mohamed Nasheed has garnered huge international coverage, as well as foreign accolades for his attempts in trying to champion the Maldives as a small nation working towards becoming a fully sustainable economy. Yet at island level, how are these commitments being seen?

Cox added that the time had perhaps come for government to be more inward looking by opening up national debate and understanding of what climate change could mean for the Maldives on an everyday basis.

“The president has been exceptional at selling climate change issues to the world. Yet I think the Maldives will benefit at every level through a basic of understanding what [climate change] is going to mean for the country and how it is that decisions are going to be made in the future about what are the best chances for economic growth. Where is it that people are going to be living? How are they going to be living?” he said. “All these things I think could be and must be fleshed out. I think it could be a very interesting national dialogue to have. There has been a certain amount already, but this about the future in the Maldives.”

Cox himself, along with representatives from the Ministry of Finance and Treasury, the Ministry of Housing and Environment, the National Office and the United Nations Office for Project Services (UNOPS) visited Fares-Maathoda on April 12 to meet with local councilors, and outline how Danish donor aid for funding climate change adaptation would be allocated on the island.

The allocated funding, which totals 5 million Danish Krone (Rf12 million) will be put into a scheme to support a wider number of future development projects targeted at offsetting the potential impacts on the country from climate change and rising sea levels. On Fares-Mathooda, some of the funds are being set aside for drainage and waste management projects.

Beyond president Nasheed’s international sustainability pledges, positioned on the other side of the country, and indeed the political spectrum, Fares-Mathooda, which elected five councillors into power from the opposition Dhivehi Rayyithunge Party (DRP) in February’s local council elections, claims to have a great need for assistance in reducing its vulnerability to the sea and the elements.

Speaking to Minivan News, councillor Hussain Rasheed claimed that aside from the long-term threats of rising seas and freak natural disasters such as the 2004 Asian Tsunami, seasonal occurrences such as high tides were proving to be problematic for the island’s development.

The low-lying nature of the island had meant that storms and tidal swells were major problems for residents on the Fares side of the island, whom had in the past been forced to vacate to the Mathooda side for safety in certain circumstances.

“This is a very big problem, for instance, many people suffered psychologically when there was a tidal wave, and with many people affected, we needed a lot of assistance to relieve this suffering,” he said.

An engineer present at the meeting, as one of the bidders hoping to work on the climate change adaption projects for Fares-Mathooda, claimed that the low-lying geography of the island meant that waves of even a metre in height posed a huge flooding risk. The engineer added that the problem was made worse by the reclaimed land between the two formerly separate islands that had since been combined physically and administratively, limiting natural drainage options for water building up on the land.

In trying to address these concerns, Andrew Cox said that it was vital to focus on the specific vulnerabilities facing a community, island or an entire atoll in the case of the Maldives, rather than solely looking at large scale energy investments in a bid to provide national solutions to environmental and coastal management.

“What is it that people need? That is the bottom line,” he said. “People have been talking about climate change for a long-time, but it has been mostly focused around international negotiations to try and reverse carbon into the atmosphere. But so far there has not been an international deal,” he said.

Cox added that this failure for international agreement still hadn’t dampened interest from politicians, donors and NGOs in being seen to be “doing something” about climate change around the world.

“The big question that I think the Maldives can answer about climate adaption is, how do you do that? In real life what do these changes mean?” he asked.

According to Cox, like almost every other nation in the world, the Maldives does not have any large-scale examples of climate change programmes, but rather a great deal of smaller pilot projects designed to try and limit potential vulnerability to environmental changes. This he said, was often seen in a variety of areas such as water or waste management.

The UN representative said these smaller projects might be present on a number of islands in the form of different waste management projects that resulted in various levels of success.

“The central concept that we need to talk about and agree, is what happens when you bring all these things related to climate change together in one place? How do you make a material change in the vulnerability of one atoll?” he asked. “Even an atoll is too small, because the Maldives doesn’t have that much time, but you have to start somewhere. You take an atoll and see what it needs as a whole to get from point X on the vulnerability scale to point Y, which is hopefully above the minimum level of security.”

Just as important though, according to the UN Representative, would be the country’s attempts to overcome poverty through economic development measures, reducing a country’s vulnerability beyond investing in infrastructure alone.

“This is a concept that makes a lot of sense, but it hasn’t been done. The exciting thing for the Maldives is if you can go down that path, you can show donors the way. This will hopefully benefit the Maldives as well as international projects as well,” he said.

“It doesn’t necessarily mean all the answers will be here, but a lot of them might be.”

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