Op-Ed: World Ocean Day — How the Maldives Can Lead the Charge for Global Change

The ocean is our lifeline, covering 70 per cent of the earth, providing shelter for millions of marine species and offering humankind immense resources.  The Maldives – 500,000 people living in ocean-side communities across an archipelago of 26 atolls and 1,192 islands – demonstrate the challenges of living within an ocean world and its vast potential.

Every year on June 8, we celebrate World Ocean Day, raising global awareness of the benefits we derive from the ocean and our individual and collective duty to use its resources sustainably. We recognise the importance of the blue economy to small island states like the Maldives and must ensure that the ocean is not only our treasured history but also part of our healthy and prosperous future.

How can we assist the Maldives in meeting the increasing dangers of the climate crisis and strengthening its relationship with the ocean? Our two organisations, one led by the world’s nations and states, and one led by people, seek to help the Maldives further its expressed interests in fighting climate change and preserving and protecting our threatened ocean. 

At the just concluded United Nations 4th Small Island Developing States (SIDS4) Conference in Antigua, Maldives President Mohamed Muizzu directly addressed these challenges, calling for international public and private sector finance to invest in Maldives – to provide urgently needed climate financing for new green energy sources and to fund climate protections for communities and islands threatened by rising sea levels. Recognising the precarious state of our oceans due to human consumption patterns and global heating, the President also recently ordered a pause on the construction of critically needed infrastructure over concerns about high-water temperatures and coral bleaching in nearby waters.  

Heeding the President’s call, the UN and Ocean Generation are prepared to assist the Maldives in offering solutions for the challenges faced by one of the most climate-vulnerable states in the world: 

Green Energy: 

A critical issue for the Maldives is reducing the use of expensive diesel fuel for energy production and transport between distant atolls and island communities. Less diesel fuel use is a win-win: fewer carbon emissions and less foreign exchange spent on costly imported fuel, now the equivalent of 10 per cent of GDP. 

International investment is urgently needed to scale up commercial, private-sector-supported solar and other renewable energy sources for Male and other urban areas, smaller island communities, and resorts. Meeting the Government’s goal of 33 per cent green energy supply by 2028 is a key priority. 

Waste and Ocean Plastics: 

Maldives has long recognised the inherent limits of small island states where people rely on imported foods and goods. Disposing of waste safely and reducing the amounts of waste generated are critical goals for improving the lives of Maldives’ coastal communities. Most importantly, reducing the importing of single-use, throwaway plastics into the Maldives and ultimately into our ocean will add to the ocean plastics that already wash up on the shores of Maldives atolls.

We cannot rely on recycling to address our plastic waste problem. Only 13 per cent of global plastic is recycled, and of that 13 per cent, only 1 per cent is re-used through the system again, for a total of 0.0013 per cent globally. This means that even the plastic that does get recycled will eventually end up in landfills, being burned, or in the environment.

Plastic is a wonderful material for many reasons. It has even saved nature time and time again. We have given talks in schools around the world where pupils sit on plastic chairs. How many trees would have been felled if we were still making our furniture out of wood? Turtle shell was once used to make eyeglasses, tea caddies, soap boxes, and all kinds of things. Plastic may well have played a role in saving sea turtles, particularly the Hawksbill, which has a beautiful, patterned shell.

Global plastic production is currently around 420 million metric tonnes per year, half of which is destined for single use.  Plastic producers estimate that production will reach 1.8 billion by 2050 (source: Plastics Europe).

Single-use plastic is invaluable in medicine, but our ‘addiction’ to plastic bags, bottled water, straws, non-refillable lighters and other ‘disposable’ items must be addressed. We welcome the Maldives Ministry of the Environment’s efforts to increase fees on plastic bags as essential to the national goal of phasing out plastic usage.

The more we learn about the ocean, the more we will love it and want to protect it. People of the Maldives already know this: the ocean offers the greatest hope for humanity’s survival. Education for all ages, not just young people, generates a caring ethos worldwide. We need our children to grow up knowing that the ocean provides more than half of the oxygen we need and absorbs much of the CO2 we produce. It is our ‘life support system.’

The ocean is our biggest ally in climate change, especially when it comes to absorbing heat.  The global average temperature currently sits at 15 degrees C, if the ocean weren’t busy absorbing the heat we produce, that average would be closer to 50 degrees C.  Protecting the ocean should be in our DNA.

We still have time to ensure a safe and healthy future for our ocean. Never before have we had so much information. We understand where we have made mistakes in the past. We have all the science we need, and we know what the solutions are. Our challenge is bringing governments and corporations on board, and that is still achievable.

The United Nations and Ocean Generation believe that the lessons of the Maldives can help all island states and, directly, the people of all communities and states worldwide. The climate initiatives that can transform the Maldives economy can light the path for the entire world. Scaled up, efforts to reduce fossil fuel use and to end the world’s throwaway consumer culture can serve as effective change models to protect our ocean and rescue our planet. 

Bradley Busetto is the UN Resident Coordinator in the Maldives and Jo Ruxton, MBE, is the founder of Ocean Generation, an organization working to restore a healthy relationship between people and the ocean.

Learn more about the Ocean Generation at:  https://oceangeneration.org

Initially published on https://www.plus.mv