In most countries environment lovers celebrate June 5th every year by rejoicing and recollecting the memories of how much effort was put in to achieving a sustainable future and by setting new targets for the upcoming year.
A lot of activities are being held by the environment ministry in collaboration with schools, youth groups, NGO’s and government bodies to celebrate the environment day each year. Celebrating environment day has been more of a ritual in Maldives lately. With a lot of important issues related to the environment at focus today, adequate work need to be carried out by the relevant authorities immediately.
Environment day had been lately been recognized as a symbolic day in which we ‘contribute’ to the environment by forcing ourselves to mark a “Pedestrian Day” and put a ban on vehicles for 6 hours. A day in which we display material made from ‘recycled’ material which we refuse to use afterwards.
One of the major setbacks for our community to effectively adopt sustainable development goals today is the lack of communication between the relevant parties. Relevant government authorities need to work hand in hand with the communities, in Maldives the island communities which is a key stakeholder.
With Rio+20 conference around the corner, the government had so far failed to share its agenda and the issues which it would be addressing at the UN conference on sustainable development to take place in Rio de Janeiro from 20-22 of this month, with Transparency Maldives who had expressed their interest in discussing climate fund mapping and recommendations for Rio+20.
On the bright side, majority of the Parliament recently, backed the Maldives' participation in the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES).
The aim of CITES is to ensure that international trade in specimens of wild animals and plants does not threaten the survival of the species in the wild, and it accords varying degrees of protection to more than 33,000 species of animals and plants.
On such an occasions, our utmost priority should be to maintain our stand on the international arena as well as practically executing and obeying the treaties already joined. One of the greatest achievements to Maldivians is the adoption of means of sustainable fisheries. One of the major threats to our fisheries is the fishing vessels from neighboring countries within the Maldivian Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) from time to time.
Our economy is vastly based upon fisheries; hence authorities need to take strict action towards these law benders in order to facilitate the adoption of sustainable means of fisheries within our waters. The Maldives National Defence Force (MNDF) patrols the Maldivian waters to safe guard our EEZ and the Fisheries Ministry is in charge of the regulation and monitoring process while bodies like Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) act as watchdogs to ensure the smooth running of these processes.
Nonetheless, some Maldivian fishermen still practice methods which could undermine the process of sustainable fisheries and could kill some endangered and protected species. It is our responsibility to abide by these regulations for the good of the whole community. As for the government, it should also involve private parties and island communities as well as individual organizations in its work to smoothen the progress of efforts towards a sustainable future.
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