MAJOR ENVIRONMENTAL ISSUES

The ecology of the islands and the reefs is extremely delicate. Therefore, the general ability of the environment to withstand stress, or what will be referred to in this paper as the environmental threshold, is relatively low in these islands. With the development of a resort, or even by habitation, major environmental problems arise. Both the severity and time lag for the problem to arise depend on the carrying capacity of the island. This is once again dependent on a number of factors such as the natural coastline, size and location of the inner lagoon, location of the island on the reef and the atoll, wave climate, current flow patterns of the coast, size and type of island, health of the island vegetation and their interrelationships. In sum, although the island and reef ecosystems are in general delicate, carrying capacity will vary between areas. This has implications for management, and these implications have been taken into consideration by the Maldives in developing the management measures described in the next section.

In general, the most common environmentally detrimental effects of tourism or habitation of islands are as follows.

1) Effects of construction of coastal structures. For development of a resort, it is vital to have easy access to the island and safe berthing facilities for boats. Hence, at a minimum, a jetty has to be built in the inner lagoon and a passage deepened through the reef. The following represents known effects that have occurred in the Maldives from construction of coastal structures.

a) movement of sand around the island is obstructed from the construction of coastal structures such as rockfilled jetties. This causes accretion on the updrift and erosion on the down drift side of the structure, severely effecting the island.

b) alteration of the current movements largely by creation of ripple currents, is often caused by dredging of the inner lagoon for harbor development.

c) greater sedimentation on the coral colonies occurs during the process of dredging of the inner lagoon for harbor development, causes. Corals are literally suffocated by sedimentation.

d) destruction of the habitat of many marine creatures from reef blasting. In addition to the physical damages, reef blasting affects the existing current movements and wave climate. Changes to these factors may affect the erosion, accretion patterns of the island, and water quality. This also negatively affects the visual quality of reefs which is one of the most important features of the Maldives tourist product.

2) Developers are often compelled to construct additional structures to minimize damage caused by coastal structures as described in 1, above.

As described above in 1, severe effects to reefs and islands occur from construction of coastal structures, including jetties, seawalls, detached and submerged breakwaters and groins. Most of these structures, although protecting a certain locality, severely affect other parts of the island when they disrupt the existing coastal process. Consequently, additional structures are required which in turn worsen the situation. Because of the many factors involved and the irreversibility of the effects to the coastal and marine processes, it is very difficult to solve the problems without hard engineering solutions. These engineering works reduce the aesthetic integrity of coral islands, which is also an important feature of Maldivian tourist products.

3) Destruction of reefs from coral and sand mining in the development of the first generation resorts.

Destruction of the reefs adversely affects the island, and undermines their biological role as a fishery area and repositories of biodiversity. Mining also reduces the capacity for the reefs to act as a natural sea defense. This is because the natural combination of plants on the coastline is the most effective in