Opinion: From the WNC mountains to Maldives: Urging glocal environmental diplomacy
A Maldivian friend visiting our Blue Ridge Mountains exclaimed in appreciative recognition: “Wow! Just like Kuludhuffushi,” his home island in a northern atoll of Maldives. “A biological island ecosystem” with unique geology, climate, flora and fauna was how the visitor sign described the peak of Mount Mitchell. The Fulbright Scholar, Adam Abdulla, and I stood marveling at the sea-like view of rolling clouds and peaks circling out all around us. We both were remembering similarly vast, circular ocean views from islands in Maldives.
The Indian Ocean archipelago nation of Maldives and the Southern Appalachian Mountains region of Western North Carolina have much in common. In addition to being places I have lived and love among my favorites on Earth, they share lots of attributes, positive and negative. Each for now has a natural heritage of some of the most beautiful scenery in the world and, consequently, with these natural assets today each depends economically on tourism. The Maldives islands (with average elevation of only 2 meters or lower than 6 feet) and the WNC mountains with its main city Asheville (at elevation of about 670 meters or 2,200 feet) are among the world’s top destinations.
Yet in each place, unregulated development is destroying the very reasons for tourism-attraction ― mountains, trees, ancient rocks, water, views in WNC, and coral reefs, mangroves, other trees, sand, water in Maldives. Many leaders and people in these beautiful locations promote conservation and sustainable development goals on global, national and local levels. Yet in each location there’s more difficult work to be done diplomatically to encourage local concern and solutions to environmental problems. As microcosms, these special places can lead not only globally but also locally set examples of conservation.
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Maldives is listed among small island developing states at highest threat of catastrophic inundation from rising seas resulting from global warming. Tourists worldwide are racing to visit this top destination to enjoy idyllic islands before they might go back under the Indian Ocean. WNC’s Appalachian/Blue Ridge/Great Smoky mountains and Asheville are a major destination for tourists and buyers seeking escape-property from low-lying beach abodes or polluted urban spaces. In Maldives and WNC, efforts to halt human destruction of natural assets generally fail against powerful local interests supporting or ignoring rapacious activities.
Mountains of Western North Carolina with their beauty and climate, even sacredness, attracted indigenous people who inhabited and revered the land for millennia before conquering European settlers arrived. By mid-19th century, tourists were visiting these mountains and Asheville well before the railroad reached these rugged heights. A detailed guidebook entitled “Mountain Scenery” in 1859 was written by a great-great-uncle. Long before the 2020 pandemic put a temporary brake on “Land of the Sky” tourism, Asheville experienced intermittent depression and economic recessions slowing tourism over the previous 160+ years.
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Maldives opened to modern tourism in November 1972 and 50 years later the country was voted No. 1 tourist destination in the world. When I moved there in 1976 to conduct my Ph.D. ethnographic fieldwork, there were still only propeller planes bringing relatively few tourists. As the first accredited foreign correspondent in Maldives, I wrote first-time entries about Maldives in modern Asian and world guidebooks. Tragically, what put Maldives urgently on world tourists maps were reports on global climate change and warming threatening the island nation.
Maldivian leaders have become global diplomatic leaders in promoting climate and environmental diplomacy. In the WNC mountains, Asheville is world headquarters for the U.S. National Centers for Environmental Information. Yet in each place, there’s often a reluctance to deal with problems at local levels. What’s needed is “glocal environmental diplomacy” through which diplomacy starts at the local level to promote and assure community conservation and also brings global messages back locally with global and local diplomacy combining to achieve diplomatic solutions.
Positive global images, gaining a reputation as a beautiful destination with remarkable natural scenery, are hard to achieve but easy to lose. It’s difficult, if not impossible, to rebuild a fragile natural environment once mountain slopes and trees have been demolished for buildings or mangroves destroyed to fill with air-strips and coral reefs crushed to export sand. Maldives islands and WNC mountains and all our planet need saving. Glocal environmental diplomacy can address issues at the local level to help reach global diplomacy’s sustainable development goals for saving our whole world natural heritage.
Elizabeth (Liz) Colton, author, diplomat, teacher and Emmy Award winning journalist, currently teaches diplomacy and the media worldwide for UNITAR. Her Ph.D. thesis in social anthropology was on Maldives for the London School of Economics & Political Science. She serves as Diplomat&Journalist in Residence at Warren Wilson College.
This article originally appeared on Asheville Citizen Times: Opinion: From WNC to Maldives: Urging glocal environmental diplomacy
