The Maldives' unique geography also presents some interesting challenges in terms of water, sanitation and waste management. How have you been addressing those issues?
Another of President Yameen's goals when he came into office was related to sanitation and sewerage. At the time, only 37% of the islands had a sanitation system, but our target is to reach 75% of the population by the end of next year. When he came into office the water system only reached about 25% of the population. Our target is to reach 75% and we are set to reach that goal as well. These are the essential services that people need, and power is required to do it all, so we are also trying to reduce energy consumption and make it sustainable. That is key – when we do anything we try to do it in the most environmentally friendly way possible. With water, another key issue is that due to the effects of climate change, the dry period is getting longer and, on most of the small islands, the drinking water is provided by rain. When there are water shortages we have to send water from Malé to these islands. Logistically this is another problem, and our target is to end this by installing larger storage systems on all of the islands.
The Maldives is a tourism destination renowned for its pristine beauty. This and the fishing industry are dependent on the environment, so if we don't make sure it's proper, clean and lively, there will be repercussions. We have to have a very good reef system and clean beaches, and for that we need to ensure proper waste management. Over the last 40 years, especially after tourism arrived, the build-up of waste grew and grew. However, that is another area of the President's focus. We did not have any waste management policies, so the first thing we did was to make good policies and ensure that people are educated in this issue. A key point of that is to have a water management centre on every island by the end of 2018, and we are also adding compost systems to the islands to minimize actual waste. Again in Malé, the capital, we had a lot of issues regarding waste management, but now we have a government-linked corporation called WAMCO which is now handling the waste by bringing in state-of-the-art vehicles and collection. There will also be seven regional collection centres that gather what is not compostable from the smaller islands. We realise that if we don't look after our environment, there will be nothing left. And due to the effects of climate change, there's a lot going on such as coastal erosion and reef bleaching. That's nothing we did, but we are putting a huge effort into making sure our environment is kept safe and alive. Over the last four years, we were able to protect about 28km of coastal area.
How has the Maldives been working with the international community to get the message out on climate change?
The Maldives has been very vocal, not only now, but for the last 20 years. In 1989 we hosted the first sea level rise conference to talk about the effects of climate change. In 2015, the Maldives became the Chair of the Alliance of Small Island States, which is the voice for small islands in the UN and other platforms. In that role we played a key part in the Paris Agreement, advocating for small islands states and especially in setting the target to lower the maximum temperature increase to 1.5C. We remain the chair and we are doing a lot of work in promoting renewable energy for small island states. We came up with the Island Renewable Energy Initiative (IRIE), which promotes renewable energy as the answer.