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Will Maldives cease to exist, engulfed by seas rising from the effects of global warming? |
Is the Maldives, a country of about 1,200 coral islets and 400,000
people in the Indian Ocean, southwest of Sri Lanka, living on borrowed
time? Is it likely to be wiped off the face of the earth in another 40
years, engulfed by seas rising from the effects of global warming?
I’m
sure there are people — politicians, businessmen, even scientists —
who’d ridicule this notion and the very idea of global warming, but for
the Maldives, one of the world’s smallest nations, the fear is almost
mortal. The country feels it’s living in the very jaws of death and has
pleaded with the world, on many occasions, to come to its rescue.
In
1992, speaking at the UN Earth Summit, the then Maldives’ president
Maumoon Abdul Gayoom declared his fear of doom in these words: “I stand
before you as a representative of an endangered people. We are told
that, as a result of global warming and sea-level rise, my country, the
Maldives, may sometime during the next century disappear from the face
of the earth.”
In late 2007, at the UN climate change meeting in
Bali, Gayoom sounded desperate. “Over half of our islands,” he said,
“are eroding at an alarming rate. In some cases, island communities
have had to be relocated to safer islands. Without immediate action,
the long-term habitation of our tiny islands is in serious doubt.”
But
behind these frantic pleas is a growing realisation that action by the
global community just isn’t round the corner. The Maldives was the
first country to sign the Kyoto protocol to fight global warming, but
others haven’t quite shared its enthusiasm. So it has decided to take
matters in its own hands and do whatever it can to the best of its
ability.
Its immediate goal is to become a fully carbon-neutral
country by 2020, switching from fossil fuel to 100 per cent renewable
energy sources. It’s thinking of a mix of wind turbines and rooftop
solar panels, plus power plants burning nothing but coconut husks. Its
long-term goal is to save up enough to buy a new homeland elsewhere and
relocate its entire population before the crunch comes.
While
carbon neutrality isn’t difficult to achieve, how feasible is the idea
of a new homeland? The Maldives’ new president, Mohamed Nasheed, says
the savings are to come mainly from revenues earned from tourism. They
could. Tourism is a major segment of the Maldives’ economy, accounting
for over 30 per cent of its GDP, and the more than 600,000 tourists who
visit every year are mostly high-spenders and long-stayers.
But
where does one find an alternative homeland for an entire nation? It
won’t be easy to find an island that’s high and safe and uninhabited or
that’s not a nation already or part of a nation. And though the
Maldives has held relocation talks with Sri Lanka, India, and
Australia, would any country want to carve out a part of its territory
and sell it to another?
Perhaps, the Maldives should start
looking for a solution that’s more practical and pertinent. The basis
for such a solution already exists in the form of an artificial island
that’s being built just off the country’s main inhabited island of
Male. It’s called Hulhumale, or New Male, and many consider it a smart
answer to the Maldives’ problem of survival.
The Maldives is
nowhere more than six feet above the sea level, and seas rising from a
global snowmelt could easily swamp it. Memories are still fresh of the
devastating 1987 floods that submerged most of Male and the December
2004 tsunami, when 53 of the country’s 199 inhabited islands suffered
severe damage — 20 were totally destroyed, and 19 of its 87 luxury
resorts were badly mauled.
After the 1987 floods, a frantic
government responded by erecting a concrete sea wall against the waves,
which now rings Male. However, since the concrete tetrapods can only
soften the blow and not thwart the surges altogether, the government
also began, in 1997, to build Hulhumale as an alternative refuge
several feet higher than the existing height of the rest of the country.
Hulhumale,
about four times the size of Male, is actually a shallow lagoon being
filled with sand dredged from the ocean floor. Its straight, wide
streets, modern apartments, and more than basic facilities have already
attracted several thousand people to move there. More are willing to
follow to escape from Male’s congestion.
For the Maldives living
in fear of doom, this is a possible way out. There are other shallow
lagoons in the island chain where more Hulhumales could be built, if
needed, to protect its people and economy. It’s going to be costly, no
doubt, but at least it makes more sense than looking to buy a new
homeland, and the UN, the Asian Development Bank, and the World Bank
might be called upon to help.
Source: business-standard.com
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