Fact Check: Maldives is not underwater but it is already sinking under climate changes’ impact

The tiny country with a chain of about 1,200 small coral islands and sandbanks has an average elevation of just 1.5 meters above sea level. Despite its carbon footprint being one of the lowest in the world, the country seemed doomed to shrink faster due to the global warming and associated rise in sea-levels.

As the island nation lacks significant natural barriers such as cliffs or hills to protect it from rising sea level and erosion, locals are using all sorts of techniques to protect against flooding and erosion such as sandbags, beach groins, artificial reefs and coral planting.

Meanwhile, a post made by an user Wide Awake Media on X claims that if climate change was real then why Maldives, the lowest-lying country in the world, is still above the water. The user has shared a Google Earth time lapse video of the archipelago showing its contours between 1984 and 2022 to disprove the claims of rising sea levels.

The X user captioned his post sarcastically saying, “Shocking satellite imagery reveals the devastating extent to which climate change has caused rising sea levels to submerge the Maldives between 1984 to 2022.”

The viral claim link is here and the archive link here.

Here’s the screenshot of the viral post.

Fact Check:

During the investigation, the Telugupost Fact Check team found the claim that the island nation Maldives is still above water is false.

Sea-level rise is not even across the globe and it is a long-term effect of climate change. The previous data about the change in sea-level in parts of the world show that there are regional differences in
the shift mainly due to two main reasons -- ocean dynamics and Earth’s uneven gravity field.

According to NASA, “Between 1993 and 2018, sea-level rose 12-15 millimeters per year (about half an inch per year) in some regions, and went down by that amount in others. But on average, it has gone up by about 3 millimeters per year (about 28 millimeters, or 1-1/8 inches, per decade) in that same period. Most of this unevenness is caused by ocean dynamics.”

Even though the sea-level rise is uneven, yet Maldives witnessed a widespread mangrove dieback in 2020. Between 2017 and 2020, the sea-levels rose by about 30 mm and consequently the island nation lost nearly a quarter of its mangrove forests, which are vital coastal defenders and enhance the country’s coastal resilience to climate change.

“In 2020, a widespread mangrove dieback occurred in the Maldives. Analysis of satellite images suggests the dieback potentially affected up to approximately 26% of islands containing mangrove forests. Preceding the mortality event, there had been no large storm events or tropical cyclones, which are typically associated with mangrove mortality, according to a report published in the journal Scientific Reports on November 12, 2024.

The report blamed the die-off of the mangrove forests due to the prolonged exposure to seawater from high sea-levels. It added that increased salt-level in the water touching the shorelines, greatly contributed to the death of mangrove trees.

It may sound contradictory that some atoll islands in Maldives are gaining land given that many others are less than a meter above sea level despite the sea-level rising by 0.7 feet in the last 140 years.

A study published in 2021 in ScienceDirect states that, “between 2000 and 2017, the total land area on these (Maldives) atolls has increased by 61.74 km2.

According to the 2023 study, the researchers examined the data between 1969 and 2019 and found that out of 49 atoll islands, half had gained land over that time period. The below graph explains how the island’s surface area can increase despite a rise in sea-level. (Source: Masselink et. al (2020))

Meanwhile, the Maldives government is taking measures to stave off the impact of rising sea-level on the country’s shorelines. The government is creating new land from the sea by either by removing water from muddy areas or raising the level of the land.

Earlier this month, President Dr Mohamed Muizzu announced a reclamation project encompassing 30 hectares of land on L. Maavah Island. According to a report in Nature, the island nation has reclaimed a lot of land, in the past five decades.

Scientists are still gaining insights into the island behavior pertaining to the expansion of atoll lands. The local government is also making efforts to avoid the impact of rising sea-level. These things might prove helpful to the people but the effects of climate change such as coral bleaching, mangrove forests death due to saltwater intrusion and related climate change effects still pose a threat to the ecological ecosystem of Maldives. Hence the claim that the Maldives is not facing the impact of climate change is misleading.