Dr. Shehenaz: The Maldives is an island nation with about 1,190 islands, and people live on less than 200 islands and the rest are uninhabited. We have a population of about 500,000, of which locals are about 400,000 and the rest are expatriates. In the Maldives, our islands are very small and low lying, and the average elevation is about 1.5 meters above sea level.
You mentioned the number 1.5 meters above sea level. I think that makes the Maldives one of the lowest lying, if not the lowest lying –
Dr. Shehnaz: The lowest lying, I think. Yeah.
So that also puts it at the forefront of this challenge we're facing now as we see the effects of climate change and the impact that’s having on the ocean. Can you walk us through what exactly is happening in the Maldives right now?
Dr. Shehenaz: We can see the changes due to climate change. Earlier, our average temperature was between 28 to 30 degrees Celsius throughout the year. But now we have very high temperatures going up to 34, 35 degrees as well, so you can see the effects of climate change and then we can see erosion as well happening in the islands.
What kind of changes have there been, or what is predicted to happen in terms of ocean level?
Dr. Shehenaz: It has been predicted that we can go the whole country can go underwater in 50-100 years if we don't act on it now, so it's imperative that we act on it now and reduce carbon emission.
The Maldives alone, we can't do it because our carbon emission rate will be very negligible compared to the world. As a global community, we have to work on this.
In addition to those mitigation strategies, the Maldives is also taking a very interesting approach by using migration as a kind of adaptive strategy. Could you talk about how that is happening in the Maldives right now?
Dr. Shehenaz: We have an artificial island called Hulhumalé we are developing so that people from smaller islands can migrate.
The capital of the Maldives Malé is about 2.4 square kilometers. We have one third of the population living there, so it is really congested. To curb that and to mitigate that, the government decided to reclaim an artificial island near Malé so that will be eased. I think it was in 2004 that people started living there, and since then we have reclaimed more land and then more people have migrated from the atolls as well. But still it's not sufficient because still Malé is congested.
The people from Malé, most of the time they don't move to Hulhumalé earlier, but now I think people have started moving because there's a bridge as well to travel from Hulhumalé to Malé. Earlier they had to go by ferry. So maybe that's also one of the reasons, and now Hulhumalé is quite developed in terms of infrastructure and then other services.
I'm hoping to talk about the joint research that has been conducted this time. What was its main purpose and who was involved?
Dr. Shehenaz: We had a meeting with The Global Infrastructure Fund Research Foundation a couple of years back during COVID time. They started doing research in Hulhumalé, so we met them and they expressed interest to conduct joint research and then later on the Sasakawa Peace Foundation also joined.
We had a meeting in Malé, the three groups, and then we decided that we should jointly conduct this research to find out what are the motivations for migrating to this artificial island Hulhumalé and then we can look into more diverse areas as well. For example, this time we looked at the northern part and the southern part as well of the Maldives, and so the perspective was more broad.
What were some of the main findings that came out of this research and was there anything that struck you specifically about the data that was collected?
Dr. Shehenaz: There were some differences between the way people perceive about climate change and global warming as well. There was a major difference between the perceptions of the people from the north and the people from the south.
And also, our people in most of the islands, even though we have a small population of maybe say 100 or 200 people, they don't want to migrate some of them because they have a sense of belonging, sense of identity to the island. So they just want to stay there.
But the other islands, especially in the south, from the data it shows that they are very keen to move, and if there are more opportunities, they are keen to move to Hulhumalé as well.
Was there any overarching result that you found in terms of people's responses to moving to the new island and what their experience was? Were there any trends that you saw in the data?
Dr. Shehenaz: Mostly they're saying the quality of education is better in the greater Malé region so that's why they want to move. And then also healthcare is better and so that's why most of them, they want to move.
But not from this study, but we see this trend that even if they move to this island, they tend to keep to themselves. For example, if a group from one island migrates, they try to keep to themselves instead of mingling with other people from the islands. So maybe in time this will improve.
And in a study that we did earlier on non-communicable diseases, we found that people living in Malé region, they are more healthy in that aspect. But from that we don't know their psychological or social well-being. So that is an area we have to conduct research on as well.
This being such an early case of this kind of adaptive strategy through migration, there's been discussions about whether the lessons learned – for example, from this joint research as well as other research that you’ve been doing based on the experience – can be applied in other countries as well that may be facing similar challenges down the road. With that in mind, I wonder if you could talk a bit about what you see as the big successes that have come out of this strategy, as well as some of the areas that require a bit more work?
Dr. Shehenaz: The big successes are that because of the geographical challenge, we have to have a school on each island, even if there are, say, one student, we need to have school and then provide teachers as well. We are doing it even though it's very costly. And then even healthcare facilities, on each atoll we have a big regional hospital, but we need to have something on each island as well, even a smaller clinic or hospital.
In terms of electricity, water, waste management, for each island we have to cater separately. But when they migrate to the big island, everything is catered for – water, electricity, healthcare, education. So, I think in terms of that, it is very advantageous to migrate. Then the government also can look after the people better when they are in the same place.
What are some of the challenges that have been encountered or that need to be dealt with in terms of after that migration or using that as a strategy?
Dr. Shehenaz: After migration, when there are more people living on one island, there are some in terms of crime also that will increase and the other challenges like psychological and social challenges, especially for the elderly people and even not so elderly. When you are living on an island, you are helping each other, the neighbors. They will be like five seconds away from helping you. So those type of things, they will be missing when they migrate. Those are some of the challenges we have to address, I think.
What are the future plans for this this research? What's coming up next?
Dr. Shehenaz: We have discussed about looking into the other aspects as well, socio-cultural aspects of migration, and then do more qualitative aspects of the research as well, interviewing people who have migrated and from academia as well, the different perspectives of this from experts. So we will be doing more in-depth study.
You are here in Japan right now, and this research was conducted as a joint research collaboration between Maldives and Japan, I wanted ask about how you see the connection between those two countries.
Dr. Shehenaz: The Maldives and Japan, we have had very good relations since the beginning of our diplomatic relations and Japan has been one of the biggest donors who has been giving assistance to the Maldives since the beginning, and they have built our schools.
Even in terms of climate change, Malé, the capital, we have a seawall built around by the Japanese government. So that helped during the tsunami as well. Malé was not badly affected by the tsunami, so the seawall protected us.
Even now we are getting assistance from the Japanese government, so I would say we’ve had a very good relationship with Japan and even with the Japanese people.
You bring up this construction of a sea wall. Japan is very much involved in, for example, disaster preparedness and disaster response, and we're also dealing now with climate change. I wonder what you would want to see in terms of collaboration between the two countries going forward.
Dr. Shehenaz: Going forward I would also like to see more of this climate change mitigation, Japan to assist not only financially but technically as well, to mitigate climate change aspects in the Maldives. That is one thing I would like to see.
In terms of Japan and Maldives relationship, I think there are other areas as well that we can see more research opportunities and then more educational opportunities as well.
Outro:
That was our conversation with Dr. Aishath Shehenaz Adam, Vice Chancellor of the Maldives National University. We have new episodes coming soon, so be sure to subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks for joining us, and we’ll see you next time.
