Visualising and Representing Environmental Change, Interviews with Island Residents, 2018-2020 [Maldives]

The Visualising and Representing Environmental Change project brought together a diverse range of ways of visually depicting how island environments are altering as a result of global environmental change. As part of the project, a number of interviews were carried out with local island residents. The interviews explored how the physical environment of the island is changing and how islanders are responding to these changes, including the installation of sea defences.

The Maldives is well known as an international tourist destination, and particularly for the beauty of its beaches and coral reefs. What is less well understood, however, is the range of environmental challenges that island communities in the Maldives face, especially problems associated with coastal and beach erosion, urban development and waste management. The 'Negotiating conflict: Environmental violence, economic development and the everyday practices of islanders' project raised awareness and contributed to knowledge by better informing policymakers and the general public about these problems. The project also significantly built the capacity of the communities to articulate their concerns and propose locally-driven solutions directly to decision makers. There is now the opportunity to considerably deepen and extend these initial impacts by raising awareness of different ways in which not only present-day but also future island-based environmental change might occur, especially in relation to climate change and sea level rise. Working in the context of a single island, and building on the data and techniques developed in the original research, the proposed follow-on project will bring together a diverse range of ways of visually depicting how island environments are altering as a result of these global phenomena. The follow-on project will bring together material collected locally in the previous project, including islanders' photographs depicting changes in their environment, with scientifically and digitally produced maps and images and archival material in community workshops in order to stimulate and deepen local and national debates on future island development. Drawing on this range of information sources, islanders will be invited to create 'story maps' that represent their perceptions of changes over time. These story maps, plus associated materials, will then be displayed publicly at the National Art Gallery in the capital, Malé. The exhibition will create a space where policymakers and representatives of island communities can come together to discuss their priorities and concerns and identify how small islands can be made liveable over the long-term under climate change. It is anticipated that the project will contribute to intensifying debates in the Maldives concerning different ways of building community resilience and protecting coastlines.

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