Maldives to turn into fortress islands

Rising sea levels threaten to swamp the Maldives and the Indian Ocean archipelago is already out of drinking water, but the new president says he has scrapped plans to relocate citizens.

Instead, President Mohamed Muizzu promises the low-lying nation will beat back the waves through ambitious land reclamation and building islands higher — policies, however, that environmental and rights groups warn could even exacerbate flooding risks.

The upmarket holiday destination is famed for its white sand beaches, turquoise lagoons and vast coral reefs, but the chain of 1,192 tiny islands is on the frontlines of the climate crisis and battling for survival.

Former president Mohamed Nasheed began his administration 15 years ago warning citizens they might become the world's first environmental refugees needing relocation to another country.

He wanted the Maldives to start saving to buy land in neighboring India, Sri Lanka or even far away in Australia.

But Muizzu, 45, while asking for $500 million in foreign funding to protect vulnerable coasts, said his citizens will not be leaving their homeland.

"If we need to increase the area for living or other economic activity, we can do that," Muizzu told Agence France-Presse, speaking from the crowded capital Male, which is ringed with concrete sea walls.

"We are self-sufficient to look after ourselves."

'Out of fresh water'

The tiny nation of Tuvalu this month inked a deal to give citizens the right to live in Australia when their Pacific homeland is lost beneath the seas.

But Muizzu said the Maldives would not follow that route.

"I can categorically say that we definitely don't need to buy land or even lease land from any country," Muizzu said.

Sea walls will ensure risk areas can be "categorized as a safe island," he said.

But 80 percent of the Maldives is less than a meter above sea level.

And while fortress-like walls ringing tightly-packed settlements can keep the waves at bay, the fate of the beach islands the tourists come for are uncertain.

Tourism accounts for almost one-third of the economy, according to the World Bank.

Nasheed's predecessor, Maumoon Abdul Gayoom, was the first to ring the alarm of the possible "death of a nation," warning the United Nations in 1985 of the threat posed by rising sea levels linked to climate change.

The UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warned in 2007 that rises of 18 to 59 centimeters would make the Maldives virtually uninhabitable by the end of the century.

The warning lights are already flashing red.

Gayoom's fear of his country running out of drinking water has already come true, as rising salt levels seep into land, corrupting potable water.

"Every island in the Maldives has run out of fresh water," said Shauna Aminath, 38, the environment minister until last week, when Muizzu's government took power.

Almost all of the 187 inhabited islets in the archipelago depend on expensive desalination plants, she told AFP.