Overcoming fear through community: a letter from the Maldives

Navigating COP28 as a young woman from a small island nation was an experience that forever altered me. For those two weeks, I struggled to gain my footing while swept away in the whirlwind of UNFCCC climate negotiations. Upon entering the grounds of Expo City in Dubai, I was immersed in a concentrated cacophony of contrasting voices from around the world, an ever-evolving flux of identities, community, ethnicity, faith, politics, passions, and urgent needs- building up under the pressurizing heat of rising temperatures and melting glaciers. 

COP28 taught me many things – an array of climate jargon and acronyms (most of which I still struggle to fully understand). The intricacies of negotiating a global crisis. To never, ever pack a pair of heels for COP. And most importantly, it taught me about myself. The conference opened my eyes to the painful truths of being born in an extremely climate-vulnerable nation. I had been feeling climate anxiety far before I understood what the term meant, and it’s salience to my own reality.

I don’t remember exactly when I learned that the Maldives is at an extreme risk. It was just always something that I’ve known, a natural part of our lived realities. My mother once told me that as a child I would wake up in the middle of the night crying, distressed by the recurring nightmares of my island sinking and panicking about losing my family. I still experience the same bouts of panic that washed over me during elementary school recess conversations, listening to my classmates ask each other- “Did you know that we’re sinking? We might not be here when we’re older?” Later, we would be taught the science behind the thermal expansion of seawater, and the concept of climate refugees. What we were learning in those classes was more than just homework. It was about the threat to our very existence. 

As I engaged with young fellow climate activists at COP28, I understood that visualizing the challenges of the Small Island Developing States can be difficult when the Maldives is often portrayed as a tropical paradise on Earth. It is difficult to grasp that while we are dubbed ‘children of the sea’, the lush coral reefs we used to swim freely in are now polluted and dying. And, along with them, our identities and lineage are fading too. Those same feelings of anxiety that seized me as a little girl resurfaced during COP28 as I came to the jarring realization that my childhood experiences were not something everybody could relate to. And that perhaps this was – but should not be – normal.

As a child I was never able to visualize exactly what our Islands would look like in a few years, but I understood that experiencing the beauty and the opulence of the environment I so adore is a blessing that Maldivian children born after me will never witness. The vibrant dreams and ambitions I had as a child were muddled by the dreadful tik-tok of the doomsday clock. How was I supposed to determine what I wanted to be when I grew up, when I was unsure about the fate of my country and my people as a whole? 

At COP28, I was thrust into a sea of human beings that were never one and the same, and in trying to keep my head afloat I finally understood that this underlying fear I had carried with me throughout my life has become an integral part of my identity. And it is something only I and a few other people can ever fully comprehend. How had I ever thought this was normal? While to some, climate change remains an abstract issue, for us, it is the existential crisis we live with daily. My respect for negotiators from climate-vulnerable nations grew as I realized that COP after COP, they were simply fighting for our right to live. 

Returning home from the intensity of Dubai was disorienting for reasons beyond jet lag. “Climate change affects everything” were words I had heard more than a few times in my life, but nothing seemed the same anymore. Funnily enough, the last day of the conference, December 13th, was my birthday. Not only did I exit my teenage years as I turned 20 on my flight home from the conference, but my brain had been rewired to draw correlations between the climate crisis and virtually everything. I saw the impacts in the extreme rainfall and floods that forced our schools and health institutions to shut down, and in the worsening of my baby sister’s asthma as the air quality plummeted. I felt it when my eczema flare-up sent me on an emergency visit to my dermatologist who informed me the medicine can only do so much, and to stay safe from the unpredictable weather events and rising heat. I heard it in the voices of my colleagues who were infuriated with the skyrocketing electricity bills as the relentless heatwaves demand more cooling. 

With rising temperatures come rising expenses. The climate crisis left nothing untouched as the volatile ocean current disrupted our family plans to visit my grandmother  who lived on her home island from which she had migrated with the hopes of a better life for her son. Climate change had halted my dream of seeing the magnificent mangroves that are now rapidly weakening – the same gentle giants that have stood guard over the majestic northern Island ނ. ކެނދިކުޅުދޫ N. Kendhikulhudhoo for generations.

As I read the news headlines celebrating the first official use of fossil fuel language at COP, the victory appeared hollow beside the local news reports of record-breaking floods and yet another warning of “Our Hottest Year Yet!” for the Maldives. 

COP28 illustrated the harsh reality of the climate crisis that disproportionately affects vulnerable groups including women and young people. But as crushing and overwhelming as climate change can feel, it was community that kept me going.

Witnessing the bright determination of Laurel Kivuyo, the young climate activist from Tanzania, the profound courage of Noora Firaq, the Maldivian woman who’s been helping lead a powerful climate organization in the UK, the unyielding resilience of the Palestinian woman risking her life to voice the perils of her people, and the spirit of the indigenous women fiercely protecting their land, gave me strength too. It was the commitment of the countless women fighting for climate justice and action that reminded me that I am not alone in this fight. And when I returned home, it was clear that protecting our environment is exactly what my life’s purpose is, too.