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Water, water, every where,
And all the land doth sink;
Water, water, every where,
Nor any drop to drink.*
The Maldives faces two problems with water today: too much of it, and not enough.
Rising sea levels due to climate change are a threat to the very existence of the country, a string of low-lying islands in the Indian Ocean.
At the same time, many communities in the Maldives find it increasingly difficult to get safe, clean, fresh water. This is true on the more remote islands especially. There, infrastructure like piped water and desalination plants tend to be crumbling or nonexistent.
Also on those outer islands, poverty rates are higher. Relying on bottled water for drinking is costly – too costly for many.
And the problem is only getting worse with climate change. Rising sea levels bring more salts into the ground water. Rainfall patterns are increasingly unpredictable. Meanwhile, the population is rising. There are more and more clean water shortages.
The Maldives government has an obligation to ensure people’s right to water, but it’s been missing the mark. Even their monitoring of the issue has been patchy at best.
Authorities haven’t always been engaging with the people most affected by water shortages. While the government has looked abroad for financing of climate adaptation projects, they often seem to forget to talk with local people about these measures.
As a result, the design, implementation, and maintenance of foreign-funded water projects isn’t always informed by local knowledge as it should be. And it fails to protect the rights of remote and poorer communities experiencing water shortages.
One notable example comes from a new Human Rights Watch report. It details how a US$28.2 million project to address water shortages in the country’s outer islands hasn’t met expectations.
The initiative was supported by the Green Climate Fund, the world’s largest fund dedicated to climate, and the United Nations Development Programme. It aimed to provide 32,000 people on 49 islands access to reliable, safe water through means like desalination and rainwater harvesting.
However, residents interviewed describe how some of these water projects were carried out hastily and remained only partially completed, years behind schedule. On one island, local council members said up to 60 percent of the population still relied on bottled water for drinking.
The Maldives government can and should do better. Other countries that help finance such climate projects can and should, too.
The challenges arising from climate change and sea-level rise are only growing – in the Maldives and elsewhere.
With more “water, water, every where,” governments need to ensure there’s also some to drink.
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* with apologies to Samuel Taylor Coleridge for taking liberties with his late-18th-century classic, “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner”
