Abstract
This chapter examines the impact of the December 26, 2004, Indian Ocean Tsunami on the political, social, and economic situation of Maldives and also looks at the recovery work that was done with the assistance of, and in collaboration with, international aid agencies, shedding light on both its successes and failures. At the same time, the chapter also reveals the impact of the tsunami on a democracy in its infancy and explores the positive and negative effects of the interplay between the disaster and the country’s rapidly evolving political environment. It concludes with lessons that are useful for small countries when dealing with large-scale disasters.
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Notes
- 1.
Interestingly, the island of Fuahmulah, unlike any other island, had a system of trenches to drain floodwater. Fuahmulah is more like a crater, lower in the center and has two large fresh water lakes. The island is naturally prone to flooding after heavy tropical storms.
- 2.
Ali Amir, former Director at Ministry of Construction and Environment. Interviewed May 2014.
- 3.
Among the people we interviewed are Abdul Muhsin, Director of the Maldives Meteorological Service; Zahid, Director of Climatology; and Abdullahi Majeed, State Minister of Ministry of Environment and former deputy minister who headed the meteorological service in 2004. Interviewed in April 2014.
- 4.
Muhsin, Interview, April 2014.
- 5.
Majeed, Interview, April 2014.
- 6.
Joint Needs Assessment by the World Bank, Asian Development Bank and the UN system, 8th February 2005.
- 7.
Until recently most inhabited islands outside of the capital Malé did not have hotels or guest houses. Visitors always stayed in the homes of friends or acquaintances. Many island communities were used to hosting total strangers due to a penal system that involved banishment of offenders to remote villages. Famous travelers such a Ibn Batuta have talked about the kindness of Maldivian communities. These traditional social attitudes towards strangers were mostly due to kindness. As an example of such kindness which can also be dangerous at times, in 2011 one of the island communities happily received a dinghy full of Somali men who were later suspected to be pirates and were taken away by the security forces.
- 8.
In our interviews with Ismail Shafeeu, the former Minister of Defense and Head of the Disaster Management Centre (interviewed March 2014), and Hamdun Hameed, former Minister of Planning, we inquired why the administration did not attempt an economic compensation system to overcome these effects. The general plan, according to them, was for the government to provide the IDPs and the hosting families with staple foods and to build infrastructure within the hosting communities which would provide public goods (e.g. upgrading schools. mosques, roads, etc.).
- 9.
Ibrahim Athif Shakoor, Former Managing Director, Maldives Industrial Fisheries Company Ltd (interviewed April 2014).
- 10.
Thariq Ibrahim, Minister of Environment and Energy. Interviewed April 2014, Former Director at Ministry of Construction in 2004 in charge of the reconstruction effort.
- 11.
Hamdun Hameed former Minister of Planning and National Development, Ismail Shafeeu, Former Defense Minister and Head of Disaster Management Center.
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Waheed, M., Shakoor, H.A. (2015). The Impact of the Indian Ocean Tsunami on Maldives. In: Brassard, C., Howitt, A., Giles, D. (eds) Natural Disaster Management in the Asia-Pacific. Disaster Risk Reduction. Springer, Tokyo. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-4-431-55157-7_4
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