- HULHUMALE, Maldives (Reuters)
- Life can be cramped when you live on a remote cluster of tiny coral
islands
in the Indian Ocean, so the Maldives has plumped for a novel if seemingly
extreme solution -- build a new island from scratch.
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- Emerging from the sea where a turquoise lagoon used to
sit, man-made Hulhumale is springing to life as an overflow to the
congested
capital, Male, a short boat ride away.
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- Around 1,500 people now live in a first cluster of
housing
erected on the 465-acre island, a giant building site to which the
government
hopes around 15 percent of the country's 300,000 mostly Sunni Muslim
inhabitants
will opt to migrate over the next 15 years.
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- Hulhumale is already the size of Male island, and will
more than double in area once a second phase of land reclamation due to
begin over the next decade is complete.
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- "The reason for the whole project is because of
the land shortage in Male," said Mohamed Shahid of the Hulhumale
Development
Unit, who is overseeing the project. "We've taken a shallow lagoon
and created a totally new piece of land."
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- "Within the next 5-10 years we will have more than
30,000 people living here, and by 2020, our target is to have 50,000 people
living in this land area," he added.
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- By the time the project is finished, 40 years from now,
the new island will be able to house up to 153,000 people, more than 50
percent of the Maldives' current population.
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- The vast, flat, barren rectangle is a far cry from the
rest of the Maldives' nearly 1,200 tiny palm-fringed islands, most of them
a few hundred meters across at most.
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- The 200 inhabited islands are home on average to just
a few hundred people or house luxury tourist resorts which offer some of
South Asia's most expensive holiday accommodation.
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- The Maldivians have doubled the surface area of Male
island using land reclamation techniques, but have now reached a natural
limit. Male has been built out to the edge of the surrounding reef, beyond
which the ocean floor drops away steeply.
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- Male, which is 1.25 miles long and 800 meters (half a
mile) wide and home to 75,000 people, is bursting at the seams. The streets
of white-washed houses are heavily built up, living conditions often
cramped
and areas of communal open space sparse.
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- Hulhumale, joined to a nearby island that houses the
Maldives' international airport by a narrow causeway, offers the chance
literally to start from scratch.
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- A NEW BEGINNING
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- A grid of brand new roads has already been laid out like
a mesh of airport runways, dividing a wasteland formed from bleached, dead
coral and sand churned up from the lagoon floor into plots for eventual
construction.
-
- There is not much in the way of recreation or nightlife,
and the only way to reach Male is by ferry or speedboat, yet new residents
are happy to get away from traffic and crowds.
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- "I have lived here for six months. It's very pretty,
there is fresh air and very few people," said 15-year-old Viyaam Ali,
who moved to Hulhumale from the small southern island of Thinadhoo.
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- "It's just like a village. I like it very
much,"
he added, strolling to one of just a handful of shops now open on the
island.
His father is one of Hulhumale's first taxi drivers.
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- A few palm trees have been transplanted from elsewhere
in the archipelago, which is dotted across 500 miles of sea off the toe
of India and is a favorite honeymoon destination boasting some of the
world's
best scuba-diving.
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- "The atmosphere is very good, but the transport
is very difficult," said 23-year-old travel agent Aminath Maastha
as she stepped off the ferry from Male.
-
- "If I had a choice between Male and here, I would
obviously choose here," she added, looking out over the newborn
island.
-
- The project began in 1997 and is being completed in
stages
because costs run into hundreds of millions of dollars. It has cost $63
million so far for reclamation and buildings.
-
- "In the second phase, we will incorporate an
existing
island as well, which is currently operating as a prominent resort,"
Shahid said. "They have been given another island as compensation
so within the next 5-10 years we will take up that island as well when
we expand this landmass."
-
- Male residents are being given priority for land and
home purchases, and President Maumoon Abdul Gayoom's government is offering
real estate at a 40 percent discount to prices in the capital as an
incentive.
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- Gayoom has spent much of his 26 years in power warning
of the dangers that global warming, erosion and shifting weather patterns
pose to low-lying island nations like his own. Hulhumale is being built
2 meters above sea level -- a meter higher than Male -- as a
safeguard.
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- "We still face the threat of sea level rise,"
Gayoom told Reuters in an interview. "There is encroachment of the
sea on many islands, there is erosion of our beaches."
-
- "We think is sufficient for the time being. Of
course
we can't foresee 50-60 years from now," he added. "For the
foreseeable
future it will be enough."
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