Sara Naseem, advocacy manager at Transparency Maldives, said guaranteed environmental safeguards needed to be in place, and is concerned that local people will not benefit enough. “The additional islands that are being reclaimed are for tourism development, to be given to the rich and elite for them to build businesses,” she said.
Van Oord’s suction dredger off the Maldives, where it was involved in a previous land reclamation project.“We are very concerned that most of the land being reclaimed will not give direct benefits to the community or local people, and their housing issues will not be solved,” Naseem said.
Niels de Bruijn, director of dredging, said such projects would become ever more common in an era of climate adaptation, and could also be expected in places such as Bali and the Bahamas. “This will really help the local people to get space to build houses and other things, and have tourism activities to make their lives a little bit better,” he said.
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