Dr Farah Faizal: “Climate Change has been a Lived Reality for Maldivians for four Decades!”

Dr Farah Faizal, former Maldivian diplomat, opened the panel Human Rights and Environmental Stewardship at our recent conference on Ecocide, Human Rights and Environmental Justice, with a defining memory from her student years: the 1987 Commonwealth Meeting in Vancouver, where President Maumoon Abdul Gayoom warned that rising seas threatened not just lives, but culture and sovereignty. It was one of the first times a state drew a direct line between environmental destruction and human survival.

For her, and for all Maldivians, climate change has never been abstract. It has been a lived reality for nearly four decades. Speaking on human rights and environmental stewardship, she stressed the urgency of acting now.

But how should human interests relate to the environment? Dr Faizal set the stage for the panel. Centre humans, and we risk deepening an already anthropocentric worldview; sideline them, and we risk alienating the communities most affected by ecological harm. Our four excellent speakers went on to explore these tensions through their research.