Comments on: SAND MINING MIGHT ERASE SOME ISLANDS FROM MAP OF MALDIVES

By: Verena

Verena — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 14:54:20 +0000

I can fully understand poor people, somewhere abandoned on an island, away from Male’ civilization to use their beach(lagoon sand for houses.

But what is going on now, dredging a channel here, and there, and for another row of water bungalows etc. – if the government doesn’t regulate this – which resort owner will care?
I’m just thinking of Reethi Rah… 8 times bigger now and lots of environmental problems (at the beginning, at least, don’t know about now). There was an EIA even for this idiotic project – and who approved that???

I don’t know who really wants that? Think the trend rather goes towards sustainable eco-tourism.
Dredge around too much and say bye-bye to your house reef…

So who’s gonna start the GREEN PARTY =) =) =)
I’m not skilled in that and unfortunately not a citizen, but I’m sure there are maaaaany people out there in your country who are able to do that.
Register!

By: Ali

Ali — Sun, 20 Jul 2008 15:39:05 +0000

resort owners do it too. specially the bigger ones. Velassaru (laguna) is an example. they dredge the shallow part of the lagoon onto the beach and use the sand for construction of the resort and have also used the sand on building their other resots.

By: RAMACHANDRA BHATTA

RAMACHANDRA BHATTA — Sun, 20 Jul 2008 05:00:30 +0000

It makes an economic sense to go for coral mining for settlements by the poor households in the absence of access to expensive imported river sands. Although such coral sand mining has enermous ecological damage value and also investement in the construction of alternative sea wall for beach conservation, it is more a social cost and the individual household pays only a small part of such social cost. It looks like a problem of tragedy of commons. We must go for some economic -institutional system to avoid such damage.

By: Ahmed

Ahmed — Sat, 19 Jul 2008 07:17:17 +0000

I think the international community will be shocker as how the father of environment(Gayoom) is conducting things around his own turf in Maldives. When he exaggerates the extinction factor on the effects of developed countries. How much damage is his development project causing the destruction of our little nation. Something maybe his reform minister kutti can think about reforming.

By: Ibrahim

Ibrahim — Sat, 19 Jul 2008 06:13:51 +0000

And we need a green party as Verena said. With all kinds of parties coming up its high time we realize environment has become the new agenda of politics. Soon politicians will have to face the dilemma of environmental issues to maintain their foot on ploitical ground.

By: Ibrahim

Ibrahim — Sat, 19 Jul 2008 06:10:14 +0000

This is the reason for us to change our development attitude towards sustainable development. Precautionery principle needs to be adopted before severe damages are done. However the visionary politicans are sleeeping over with these issues. Actually our construction industry needs to make some sacrifices and in selected bigger islands we need to develop multi storey flats for local people and rent them in an affordable manner. This will prevent wastage on building and construction and minimise land wastage. The government must get a loan from a donor and develop such a housing scheme in islands for population consolidation. Sadly we are still undermining the lack of land resources and having a vision of reclamation instead of going vertical to make best use of the scarce land we have. Reclamation is not a solution interms of cost benefit ratio and for a longterm as irreversible environmental damages are possible. For instance isalnds in Addu do not need reclamation if a better housing scheme is developed. Im sure to develop such a housing scheme is cheaper than reclamation and the protection needed for these reclaimed lands. Many reclaimed lands especially in Thinadhoo of GDh and Hithadhu of Addu are not liveable due to their vulnerability to rain induced monsoonal flooding. Hence,such a plan can have the advantages of building more safe and hazard resistance shelters with much convineinet facilities, and making it more affordable to poor islanders. Additionally making the impact on environment and carbon foot print less.

By: Verena

Verena — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 01:59:36 +0000

Another hot-topic by Bluepeace, great!

We all know how expensive the Seawall around Male’ was, where reefs have been sacrificed for land reclamation (I have figures of US$ 14 million to protect 1,52km of shore). That’s a value of USD 9000 per linear meter (Edwards, 1989).

Now check this out:
Berg et al. (1998) give a detailed analysis of the replacement costs following years of CORAL MINING in Sri Lanka. The average cost varies between USD 246,000 and USD 863,000 per kilometer of protected coastline!!!

Bali, Indonesia: USD 1 million for 500m of coastline protection!!! (Cesar, 1996).

A hotel in West Lombok: USD 880,000 (over 7 yrs period) to restore their beach stretch of around 250m, allegedly damaged by past coral mining. (Riopelle, 1995)

The Maldives should learn out of these, and their own (!!) experience.
Especially because people live so close to the water and depend on their beaches (and reefs, by the way).

This is really alarming.

Nobody likes my idea of a * GREEN PARTY * in the Maldives? =)

Cheers!