The small coral islands of the Maldives are surely among the most beautiful locations on our planet. White sand beaches, fringed with coconut palms, give way to crystal clear blue waters lapping over colourful coral reefs teeming with fish. 

Yet the vibrant colours on the reefs do not only come from the bright green parrotfish, the darting yellow damselfish and the reds and greens of the corals themselves. Some of the most bright colours come from a new threat – marine plastic, which now litters reefs and beaches as never before. This new problem, of marine plastic litter, has joined the existing scourges of climate warming and sea-level rise as a long-term threat to the ecological health and viability of this highly vulnerable nation. 

A staggering 280,000 single-use water bottles are consumed every day in Male’, the capital city of the Maldives, contributing to a total of 100 million across the Maldives per year. In 2018, 104 million non-biodegradable plastic bags were imported into the Maldives. With the scale of these figures for a tiny country, it is easy to see how current estimates predict that emissions from the manufacturing of plastic will rise to 17% of the global carbon budget by 2050. 

Fortunately the islanders are beginning to rise to the challenge, paving the way for other island and coastal communities to tackle plastic waste. Famously, the Maldives first democratically elected leader, President Mohamed Nasheed, held an underwater cabinet meeting in 2009 to highlight the desperate threat the Maldives is facing from rising sea levels. His passionate advocacy took the Maldives onto the international climate stage when he declared his country would be the first in the world to become climate neutral.

Unfortunately, on the very day that ambitious funding plans were submitted to the World Bank to radically change the energy infrastructure of the Maldives, Nasheed’s Maldivian Democratic Party (MDP) was ousted in a coup. Six years of thuggish authoritarianism followed. The Maldives lost its place at the top table of climate talks, crashed out of the Commonwealth and all talk of carbon neutrality was forgotten. 

Fast forward to now and the MDP has returned to the Maldives with an increased majority and with Nasheed as Speaker of Parliament. Bogus criminal charges against him – since dropped – prevented him standing as President but could not stop the MDP sweeping to power with new president Ibrahim Solih at the helm.

Ask Nasheed today, as I did, how large-scale use of plastic fits with a low carbon target and you’ll get an incredulous response: “It doesn’t! It really doesn’t at all. If we have a low carbon target, you can’t have plastics because plastic is a by-product of fossil fuel. The plastics problem and climate change are the same thing.”

While the Maldives has given democracy a second shot and elected a government on a promise of transparency and accountability, the national mood on the environment has shifted. Islanders who witnessed the broken promises of a renewable revolution are equally fed up with an ineffective waste management system. 

With waste collection and treatment already barely functioning across the complex geography of 187 local islands and 150 resort islands spread out across 820 kilometres, everyone can see where the plastics problem is heading. Tourists produce three times as much waste daily as local islanders, much of it single-use plastic.The Maldives already welcomes 1.4m visitors per year and the government has a target to almost double this number within five years. 

Maalhos, a sleepy island of 735 inhabitants located in the heart of the Baa Atoll Biosphere Reserve, is typical of many Maldivian islands. Walking along its sandy streets, women in traditional long dress and hijab can be found sweeping the paths clean of fallen leaves and branches from the overhanging vegetation or picking through a harvest of sea almond nuts.

It is a proud island that has retained much of its jungle cover where other islands have covered themselves in concrete. Maalhos benefits from recent changes in the law allowing local islands to host tourists in guesthouses, though to maintain the official Islamic integrity of Maldivian communities a visitor wanting to indulge in alcohol or pork will still need to check in at a resort island.