FROM DHIVEHISITEE:
On 15 March 2023, fireworks and led lights lit up a site of state sponsored ecocide in the southernmost tip of Gaaf Dhaal atoll in the Maldives, as President Solih celebrated another destructive airport project.
Holding pole position on the victim-list of global climate change, Maldives pleads shamelessly for global climate funds. It also expects to blamelessly destroy finite natural ecosystems and climate change defences for short-term political expediency, and claim from the international taxpayer to ‘mitigate’ willful ecocide. The government of Maldives is well aware of the imminent and unknowable impacts of global climate heating to its natural foundations, which constitute the seventh largest coral system in the world. The country’s finite ecosystems including coral reefs, seagrass beds, mangroves, wetlands and the rich and yet to be studied biodiversity within, sustains the nation’s economic lifelines – its tourism and fishing industries. The Maldives State of the Environment Report 2016 says that 98% of the country’s exports and 71% of its employment are directly linked to its biodiversity sector. This is unsurprising in a nation constituting 99% ocean and 1% land. This land which lies mostly below the one meter mark above mean sea level, is entirely dependent on the stability of its surrounding marine environment.
However, the government of Maldives’ development approach undermines the stability of the balance of nature in the country. It entertains a policy of domestic aviation and airport infrastructure that is grossly and disproportionately overblown in the context, capacity and need, at the expense of multiple ecosystems. The policy to have a domestic airport at every 20-30 minute travel distance attempts to justify expansion that is financially and environmentally debilitating to the country.
The multitude of questionable and destructive ecocide projects like Faresmaathodaa Airport are not environmentally accounted. The extreme loss and damage inflicted on ecosystems, the loss of services they provide to communities and existing businesses dependent on them are not valued, as a matter of practice. These projects are conducted as if these natural systems have no inherent value as the natural defences of the country. It is a well established fact that the country’s reef ecosystem foundations were instrumental in defending these small, low-lying islands in the middle of the Indian ocean. The 2004 Asian Tsunami travelling at a speed of 500 mph was slowed down by these reef defences that took the brunt of the hit. To destroy and bury these defences willfully during a self-proclaimed ‘climate emergency’ is akin to digging its own grave. The government of Maldives is invested in free riding on the narrative that it faces an existential crisis due to global climate heating, and take no responsibility to cease widespread and irresponsible ecocide nationally.
READ MORE:
https://www.dhivehisitee.com/environment/maldives-ecocide-as-achievement/
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FROM THE EDITION:
Maldives, on December 3, 2019, applied to the International Criminal Court (ICC) located at The Hague for the crime of ecocide, or wide-scale, long-term environmental damage, to be added to the court's jurisdiction.
The application was made, at the 18th Session of the Assembly of State Parties to the Rome Statute of ICC, by Hoarafushi MP and Chair of the Parliamentary Committee on Climate Change and Environment, Ahmed Saleem.
In the statement delivered at the session, Saleem declared that the time was ripe to amend the Rome Statute that would criminalise acts that amount to ecocide.
At the same session, the Pacific island of Vanuatu joined Maldives in the fight for ecocide to be considered an international crime equivalent to genocide.
"Climate change is eroding our way of life, livelihood, economy and our aspirations for a better future. It is destroying the very foundations of our economy and our natural defence system".
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