Geographical, UK, November 2016

TRAVEL The Maldives

Paradise

lost

White beaches, blue lagoons, and sunshine. A land of dreams for one million tourists a year. But there is also religious extremism, corrupt politics and the fragile archipelago faces environmental destruction. One world for the tourists, another for the locals.

Sam Mittmerham reports

I

t is only one step into paradise. I stand on the edge of our dive boat and take what divers call a ‘giant stride’ into thin air.

There’s a stomach-lifting drop, much splashing and then calm as I descend into the rainforest of the seas. Here colours abound, all shapes and sizes, myriad facets of nature’s beautiful bounty. You can be a stubbly crown-ofthorns starfish and eat coral, or a silvery barracuda feeding on fellow fish, a prickly urchin lazily grazing on algae, or a colourful sponge filter-feeding away while dripping off the side of a coral-like orange molasses. You can be big or small, have a spine or not, predator or prey, plant or animal, or indeed a mixture, as corals are. Anything is possible in this underwater melting pot, this submerged New York where everyone is just trying to make a living.

This underwater plethora of colour and beauty is one image in people’s heads when they think of the

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Maldives. And there are more: Luxury rooms floating above blue lagoons. White beaches fringing azure waters. Perfect service matching a perfect tan. Pampering, hanging lose, switching off.

But what if you switch on? What do the numbers beyond the one million tourists per year say? What about the people who live here?

The Maldives comprise almost 1,200 islands, the majority uninhabited. There are either tourist islands or islands for locals and very little mixing and interaction, with the exception of the capital Malé. But even there most visitors are whisked away from the airport to their resorts, where most staff are foreigners too: by and large Europeans, Americans and Antipodeans in management and Asians in the service jobs. There’s very little exchange and even fewer chances to catch a glimpse of how the Maldivians think and live in their country. The perfect tourist bubble.

LEAGUE TABLES But burst the bubble and the Maldives emerge as bottom players in many league tables. In Transparency International’s corruption index the Maldives are towards the bottom, or have recently not made the table at all, because threats and denunciations are now so commonplace that no data could be gathered. In the press freedom ranking of ‘Reporters without Borders’ the Maldives come in as 112th, and on the ‘Environmental Performance Index’ of Yale and Columbia universities as 137th (of 180 countries in each case).

Those hard facts alone are sobering; combined with the opinion of opposition politicians and journalists, they paint a dark and shocking picture. Opposition Maldivian Democratic Party MP Omar Abdul Razzak does not mince his words: ‘President Yameen [in power since 2012] lets loose thugs on opposition politicians who then disappear into prison. We have no free press, no freedom of religion, no independent judiciary.

Instead we have sharia law. Basic human rights are ignored and kicked into the long grass. From 2008 to 2012 we had a democracy and a division of state powers, but since then our democratically elected president Nasheed has been ousted.’

and rising sea levels for the low-lying flat-as-apancake Maldives. He was regarded as a flag bearer for democracy and conservation. Under his leadership local capacity for marine conservation increased significantly and protected areas were declared. The government’s ‘Marine Research Center’ had over 60 employees. These days they can be counted on one hand.

This is all the more surprising since the Maldives are an archipelago made up of coral atolls, built by coral reefs, which have existed for 300 million years. Today reefs are under severe threat and Maldivian reefs are no exception. Major threats are overfishing, careless tourism, pollution and erosion.

Dr. Matthias Hammer, founder and executive director of international non-profit conservation organisation Biosphere Expeditions, which has run annual reef research expeditions to the Maldives since 2011 notes with concern that the Maldivian government has slashed its reef conservation capacity. ‘The Maldives only exist because of reefs,’ he says. ‘The economy, people’s livelihoods, tourism and the very geography of the Maldives are based on reefs, so reducing capacity in reef research and conservation is biting the hand that feeds you, in more ways than one.’

The Maldives are an archipelago made up of coral atolls, built by coral reefs, which have existed for 300 million years

CORAL CONCERNS Indeed the first free and democratic elections took place in 2008. But since then Nasheed has been sentenced to 13 years imprisonment on dubious terrorism charges. He was, however, allowed to travel to Britain for medical reasons, where he promptly sought asylum, recently granted.

Nasheed made the world’s headlines in 2009 by holding an underwater cabinet meeting to highlight the very real dangers of climate change

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DIVE EXPERIENCE What state are the reefs in now? Taking that ‘giant stride’ into ‘paradise’ was my way of finding out, by joining one of Biosphere’s annual expeditions. But before my plunge the whole expedition team was put through our classroom paces, for this is no ordinary, run-of-the-mill dive holiday. Instead us ordinary recreational divers are expected to become citizen scientists in a couple of days.

Our trainer and drill instructor is the expedition scientist, Dr. Jean-Luc Solandt of the UK’s Marine Conservation Society, who trains us in Reef Check, an internationally recognised protocol to assess reef health. We are taught to collect data on fish, invertebrates, reef morphology and coral diseases and threats. Trained, tested, and only then allowed to collect data.

‘That’s Reef Check’s way of ensuring quality data’, explains Dr. Solandt, ‘and when you pass, you become my eyes and ears underwater; and the more I have, the better. More data make for better science and better conclusions’, he adds.

I pass my exams and am down in the underwater Big Apple, swimming very slowly, seeing the reef

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with completely different eyes now, noticing what I have never thought about before. Delighting in the little things as I float past, recognising the indicators of reef health, making connections in my head, understanding. No lobsters means overfishing, too many nutrients in the water equals algal growth, coral bleaching – trouble ahead. I make tick lists on my slate as I swim along a 100m tape: droupers, butterflyfish, diadema urchins, hard coral, soft coral and so on.

Up on deck, my tick list is discussed with my team and then entered into the expedition laptop.

Over time and through the efforts of a team of 20 expeditioners, a picture emerges.

El Niño hit the Maldives in May with two weeks of 32 degrees Celsius waters – at least two degrees above the ‘normal’ upper limit of 30 degrees

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EL NINO And the picture in this El Niño year of 2016 is worrying: In the Maldives, both coral bleaching (where hot water stresses and eventually kills corals) and crown-of-thorns starfish can be considered ‘natural’ events. But when these events happen often and with increased severity, reef survival is threatened and so, therefore, is the very survival of coral reef nations such as the Maldives.

The work of Biosphere has revealed a worrying reduction in the amount of Maldivian live coral over the past year, compared to other years in its citizen science dataset. Healthy coral cover has been reduced to below ten per cent in more sheltered inner atoll reefs by the recent El Niño that has also devastated much of the Great Barrier Reef.

El Niño hit the Maldives in May with two weeks of 32 degrees Celsius waters – at least two degrees above the ‘normal’ upper limit of 30 degrees. Outer reefs that are flushed with deeper, cooler water on a more regular basis have fared better (with an average of 25 per cent live coral cover).

Dr. Solandt again: ‘Our surveys showed a clear pattern, with reefs inside atolls being the worst affected. Some of the reefs denuded by the warming have also been hit hard by crown-ofthorns starfish, which eat corals. Sadly, one of the reefs that was beautiful with upwards of 70 per cent hard coral some four years ago has its remnant corals now being eaten by crown-ofthorns starfish.’

Shaha Hashim, a Maldivian conservationist and linchpin for community-based survey and reef conservation efforts, as well as a fellow expeditioner tells me that ‘more stringent efforts to conserve and build up the resilience of these marine ecosystems are crucial for our survival as an island nation. Development planning and policies need to put a higher value on environmental impacts, which is the prerequisite for any social or economic harmony.’

All this adds up to a ‘very concerning picture for the Maldives and its people’, according to Dr. Hammer, ‘because almost everything depends on healthy reefs for the Maldives: The economy, food, welfare, tourism income. If reefs are threatened, so is the very existence of the country and its social

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cohesion. We hope the reefs will recover, and while coral bleaching cannot be locally managed, fisheries, litter and pollution can be. We urge the government to use some of the income from the heavily consumptive tourism industry to pay back – to invest in the very survival of their islands and nation. Without investment from this sector, we believe the reefs will struggle to return. This is what we mean about biting the hand that feeds you.’

‘Speak to people and form your own opinion, then speak up where your voice will be heard.

Don’t let the resorts isolate you in luxury Alcatrazes’

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i

C o - or d i nates The Maldives When to go The Maldives experience warm 30°C temperatures nearly all year round. Rain occurs during the monsoon season (April-October), being particularly heavy during June to August.

Ihavandippolhu Atoll Makunudhoo Atoll

Thiladhunmathee Atoll Miladummadulu Atoll

Maalhosmadulu Atoll Horsburgh Atoll Kar

Cha diva

Ari Atoll

Faadhippolhu Atoll

nne

Felidhu Atoll

Nilandhe Atoll

INDIAN OCEAN

Mulaku Atoll

Kolhumadulu Atoll

Getting there

INDIA

l

Male' Atoll MALE'

MALDIVES

Hadhdhunmathee Atoll One and a Half Degree Channel

Huvadhu Atoll 30-day visas are given to just about I N D I A N everyone on entering the Maldives Addu Atoll (providing valid travel documents are shown). British Airways (www.ba.com) flies direct to Malé from Gatwick three times a week (Sundays, Tuesdays and Fridays). north

MALDIVIAN UNDERCURRENTS Often this hand-biting has corrupt and religiouslymotivated undercurrents. The man in power at the moment is Abdulla Yameen, as head of state and government in one. And with his concentrated power also came an increase in religious influence over politics here.

So the Maldives now has a double whammy: Religion meddling with government affairs and corruption of a few, super-rich families that control much of the tourism industry. These families have held sway over Maldivian politics ever since money came to the archipelago in the wake of the tourism boom that started in the 1970s.

Opposition politicians, who do not want to be named, now report ‘great concern, since we had a moderate Islam previously. But now fear rules.

Saudi Arabia is sending extremist preachers, Pakistan and China are investing heavily with little regard for the environment, but all the more for short-term profits, and the climate is changing, threatening our very existence.’

Indeed Islam has been declared a state religion and the Maldives seem to have become a rich recruiting ground for IS fighters. But coverage of this is unwanted, as a German film team experienced in December 2015, when a shoot about climate change and Islamic extremism was stopped by the police. The crew was arrested, interrogated for several hours and then thrown out of the country on trumped-up charges of incorrect paperwork, forbidden to return for ten years.

‘They don’t want anyone asking questions’, says journalist Markus Spieker, ‘because the Maldives have a real problem with Islamic extremism. It wasn’t difficult to find locals who proudly declared that their relatives had gone to the war in Syria to fight for so-called Islamic State.’

OUT OF THE BUBBLE So what can be done? Hammer’s recipe is to ‘strengthen civil society so that the system can renew itself from the inside. The young Maldivians whom we train often express even more concern than we do. Of course they know exactly what’s going on and what can be done.’

And the tourists? ‘They should continue to come, please,’ says Ahmed Naseem, former foreign minister and today an opposition politician. ‘They should enjoy their holiday,’ he urges, ‘but speak to people and form your own opinion, then speak up – on the internet and in the media, where your voice will be heard. Don’t let the resorts isolate you in luxury Alcatrazes. Look beyond the bubble.’

And there is another silver lining on the reef front: ‘What gives us hope for the reefs is that the last big bleaching event in 1998 was hotter, longer and more severe, and many reefs recovered good coral growth within seven years,’ says Solandt.

Hammer agrees: ‘It is not all doom and gloom.

Where officialdom is failing, civil society and committed Maldivians are stepping in. Ever since Biosphere started running its annual research trip to the Maldives in 2011, it has educated and trained Maldivians in reef survey techniques as part of our placement programme. This culminated in the first-ever all-Maldivian reef survey in November 2014 and other community-based conservation initiatives since then. Shaha Hashim, for example, has taken part in several expeditions and is now training her compatriots in reef survey techniques and setting up community-based conservation programmes. So there is hope yet!’

100 km

Equatorial Channel

100 miles

Further information Maldives tourism board: www.visitmaldives.com Biosphere Expeditions: www.biosphere-expeditions.org Marine Conservation Society: www.mcsuk.org

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