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ABSTRACT: The climate change vulnerability discourse in the Maldives coexists with a pervasive set of critical environmental factors of significance to the socio-environmental systems of small peripheral islands. This implies the need to strike a balance between global challenges associated with environmental processes at the supra-national scale and the adjustments and strategies implemented at the local scale in response to change. The current paper offers a discussion of this dialectic, in reference to both the broader contemporary debate in island studies, and the political and environmental context of the Maldives. We first outline the international scenario, and then go on, in the second part of the paper, to provide a reading of environmental policy on these islands. We argue that emphasizing the country's environmental vulnerability has reinforced a 'lexicon of risk' within the environmental discourse and that, in recent years, this narrative has been one of the main forces driving the construction of contemporary Maldivian 'nation-ness'.
Keywords: climate change vulnerability, environmental policy, islands, lexicon of risk, Maldives
https://doi.org/10.24043/isj.5
© 2017 - Institute of Island Studies, University of Prince Edward Island, Canada.
Introduction: frameworks and dialectics
Over the past four years, we have carried out extensive field work across the Maldives, interviewing environmental activists, tour operators, administrators, and representatives of local institutions. As environmental geographers, we set out to analyze both environmental policies and the production of narratives about the country's environmental vulnerability. However, our meetings with local actors prompted us to explore the dialectics underlying these policies and narratives.
This paper aims to integrate discussion of these dialectics with an understanding of the environmental challenges at the local scale, both in relation to the contemporary debate in island studies (Hay, 2006; Baldacchino, 2008; Baldacchino & Niles, 2011; Stratford et al., 2011; Taglioni, 2011), and in light of the political and environmental milieu of the Maldives. We mainly draw on two theoretical references: political ecology and the study of social responses to environmental changes. We outline key aspects of the regional context, before gradually honing in on, and proposing a reading of, Maldivian environmental policies. We conclude by taking a closer look at local socio-environmental systems, suggesting that focusing on the local scale may offer a promising path for policy-makers and researchers. In general, we...