Every evening and more so every morning, low-riding boats anchor in the flourescent blue shallows which punctuate the thousand-island nation of Maldives which straddles the equator in the Indian Ocean. These boats arrive with piles of empty white bags. Several hours later they depart — gunwales of the boats precariously close to the ocean’s surface, overloaded with stacks of bags full of sand, the residue of coral.
Young men drop beneath the water’s surface time after time and day after day to fill bags with the raw material of plaster to be used in construction of high-rise hotels and condominiums near the capital city of Malé and at resorts throughout the nation’s 26 atolls.
People say that Maldives — where the average elevation is just four feet above sea level — will be the first of this planet’s nations to be entirely submerged by rising sea levels. As I observed the morning and evening sand-transfer ritual, I had this thought: It appears Maldives’ response to global warming is to scoop up sand from the ocean and deposit it on parcels of land riding almost as low in the sea as the nearly swamped boats which deliver that sand.
JER
ALL OVER THE MAP 