Human Rights Watch (HRW) has expressed concern over the resumption of work on the Gulhifalhu reclamation project after the government successfully appealed a court order suspending the project.
The High Court had initially issued the order to suspend work on the project, pending the final ruling in a case brought forward by climate activist Humaida Abdul Gafoor against the government on the grounds that the reclamation project risked causing serious economic, environmental, and cultural harm.
However, the Mohamed Muizzu administration immediately appealed the order to the Supreme Court, arguing severe financial losses to the state, whereby the apex court lifted the order, allowing work to continue.
In a statement, HRW noted that while the case can still proceed to the merits, even as the reclamation continues to cause harm, it had already put the government on notice that if it wants this and similar projects to continue, it will be subjecting its lax enforcement of the country’s environmental protection laws not only to judicial scrutiny, but to the scrutiny of the Maldives public and beyond.
The Maldives is one of the countries most affected by climate change and has passed environmental legislation as a measure to address the problem; the most prominent piece of legislation being the Environmental Protection and Preservation Act, which mandates an environmental impact assessment or EIA be carried out before developments can proceed.
“However, government ministries often preapprove projects, rendering EIAs little more than box-ticking exercises. A former official from the Maldives Environmental Protection Agency told Human Rights Watch that once EIAs are published for a particular project, officials often reject most of the recommendations,” the organisation said in a statement calling on the government to champion its environmental protection laws and minimise the environmental damage caused by development projects.
On 17 October 2019, the Ibrahim Mohamed Solih administration awarded the Gulhifalhu project to Royal Boskalis and Van Oord from the Netherlands without any formal tendering process, in a deal reportedly worth US$53 million. Six months later, authorities released an EIA that revealed the project could cause irreversible environmental damage, however, the decision to proceed with the project had been made prior to the completion of the EIA, HRW noted in their statement.
In 2021, Abdul Gafoor filed a case against the government on the grounds that the reclamation project risked causing serious economic, environmental, and cultural harm to the local community.
