Abstract
In many small island contexts natural disasters and environmental change can combine to overwhelm communal coping capacities, at times triggering ad hoc human migration responses which can be lacking in anticipatory foresight, relevant preparedness, community coordination, and needed funding support. In the foreseeable future on-going urbanisation trends, creeping environmental degradation and progressive climate change can be expected to coalesce in many small island contexts to catalyse human migrations in the 21st Century. This makes forward thinking policy development a critical success factor for equitable migration outcomes, both for migrants and their host communities. Drawing on Ph.D. field research conducted in the Maldives in December 2011 and January 2012, this paper examines the linkages between climate change and human movement. Extensive government coordinated inter-atoll and inter-island migrations make the Maldives a fertile location for migration research. Although at present the majority of migration across the Maldives is internal and not (yet) climate change related, useful lessons can be learned from how the government has planned and implemented macro-managed migrations across the archipelagic nation. These lessons highlight the important role of education and may also inform climate change adaptation and related migration responses in Pacific island contexts. This study extends previous research by expressly inviting the participation of migrants and host communities. In soliciting these unique grassroots perspectives this research aims to identify and encourage more anticipative and congenial migration processes and outcomes.
Preamble: This paper is based on Ph.D. research conducted at the University of New South Wales, with the unabridged Maldives case study available as Chap. 6 in the Ph.D. thesis entitled: “Climate migration: Preparedness informed policy opportunities identified during field research in Bolivia, Bangladesh and Maldives” http://handle.unsw.edu.au/1959.4/52944.
A short background video to this research appeared in The Guardian on 6 August 2015: “Climate refugees: the communities displaced by global warming” http://gu.com/p/4ba7t/sbl.
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Notes
- 1.
An additional 25 people are missing, assumed dead (ADB UN WB 2005, p. 4).
- 2.
“If the rate of sea-level rise exceeds the maximum rate of vertical coral growth (8 mm/yr), then inundation and erosive processes begin to dominate, leading to the demise of the coral atoll. However, if the rate of sea-level rise is small, then coral growth may be able to keep pace.” (IPCC 1992, p. 107).
- 3.
Unless attribution by name was expressly agreed or requested by the respondent.
- 4.
According to Ali Rilwan of Maldives environmental NGO Bluepeace there are approximately 100,000 expatriates living and working in the Maldives (Q2/Exp/Malé/20111222).
- 5.
Equivalent in value to approximately US$ 32 (i.e. on the day the interview took place).
- 6.
Some migrant respondents from Maavaidhoo and Kunburudhoo regretted that the government had not made good on its promise to compensate them for fruit-bearing trees that they had abandoned in their islands of origin (Q17/Q18/Q19/Migr/Dest/Nolhivaranfaru/20111229). Moreover, with the in-migrating islanders all receiving brand new government funded houses there was a shared sentiment among parts of the host community that the original “Nolivaranfaru islanders were missing out” (Q15+16/Exp/Nolhivaranfaru/20111229).
- 7.
For example, it took the government six years to implement the migrations of the islander communities Faridhoo, Maavaidhoo and Kunburudhoo to Nolhivaranfaru.
- 8.
For example, each migrating family typically receives a free government funded house in the place of destination.
- 9.
Also known as the Safer Island Development Program (SIDP), the primarily “hard-systems” Safer Island Model “targets to provide the infrastructure necessary to adapt to climate change and to be better prepared for natural disasters. A Safer Island will have better coastal protection, elevated pubic [sic] buildings for vertical evacuation, emergency supplies, appropriate harbour and also more reliable communications systems.” (MPND 2007, p. 28).
- 10.
Defined by the Ministry of Planning and National Development as people “born outside their island of usual residence [who] lived in that island for more than one year.” (MPND 2006, p. 45).
- 11.
“We’ve had for a very long time transport between islands and the capital Malé, but we’ve not had transport inter-atoll and intra-atoll, … so therefore people would have to wait on their island for somebody to come on a casual visit and then go—if the destination of this vessel is where they want to go… Or they would have to hire a boat which becomes very expensive … So since 2008 we’ve started a nationwide transport ferry system. Every atoll has now the ferry system up and running.” (Q29/Exp/Malé/20120102).
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Acknowledgements
The author wishes to thank Kirsty Andersen for her copy editorial support, and Saffah Faroog for his research assistance in the Maldives. Grateful acknowledgment for relevant Ph.D. research support is also made to John Merson, Eileen Pittaway, Richard Rumsey, Geoff Shepherd, and to the international development organisation World Vision.
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Luetz, J. (2017). Climate Change and Migration in the Maldives: Some Lessons for Policy Makers. In: Leal Filho, W. (eds) Climate Change Adaptation in Pacific Countries. Climate Change Management. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-50094-2_3
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