Climate Risk Survey of Guesthouses in Maldives

“Resilient Retreats: Enhancing Sustainable Climate Adaptation PracticEs (ESCAPE)” is a project implemented by the Small Islands Geographic Society (SIGS) under a grant from USAID’s Climate Adaptation Project. The ESCAPE project is focused on building resilience of local guesthouses to climate change and natural hazards through development of climate resilient designs and draft guidelines that developers can implement. Tourism guesthouses and related infrastructure are big investments that are under risk from climate change impacts such as erosion and inundation, extreme winds and storm events, salinization of groundwater, water scarcity among others. The main objective of the project is to provide information to guesthouse developers on climate resilient design.

Maldives is one of the smallest and lowest countries in the world, with 80% of the total land area being less than 1 meter above mean sea level. More than 70% of the islands have an area of less than 10 ha and of these 34% are less than 1 ha1 . This means that a large portion of the dwellings, industries and infrastructure are primarily located within 100m of the coastline (Ministry of Environment and Energy, 2015), making them vulnerable to climate change risks

Currently, the extent that guesthouses are impacted by climate risks, and the adoption of risk reduction and adaptation strategies is unknown. While designs consider the local climate, the extent to which climate change impacts are considered in design is not visible in current guesthouse designs. Currently, there are no guidelines in the Maldives to help local guesthouse developers to consider climate resilient designs, or comprehensive information on climate impacts and risk reduction solutions. The first activities of the ESCAPE project focused on understanding the current situation and hence, a survey of guesthouses was conducted to understand the current climate risks, its impacts and how guesthouses coped with the risks.

A quantitative survey method was utilized to gain an understanding of the impact of climate risks and what is currently being done by guesthouses to address these risks. The sampling frame consisted of 770 operating guesthouses.

We invited all operational guesthouses to participate and targeted to reach 30% of operational guesthouses, which is 231 guesthouses.

The survey instrument used was an online questionnaire using Google form. The questionnaire was prepared in English and translated into the local language Dhivehi.

The survey was carried out as in-person interviews and phone surveys administered by enumerators as well as an online survey that can be self-administered by owners and operators. The administration of the survey was carried out from 17th August to 14th September 2023. All guesthouses were emailed the survey form, along with a project brief. In-person interviews were carried out to ensure more participation and also to better understand the responses. The in-person interviews were carried out in a total of 10 islands in Kaafu and Vaavu atoll from 17 – 29 August 2023.

• 60% have considered impacts from climate risks when designing their guesthouses.
• High use of groundwater, which is the most common type used for laundry, bathrooms and toilet flushing and gardening.
• Majority of guesthouses experienced impacts of extreme heat followed by drought, stormy weather and flooding from as the next highest respectively.
• The majority of guesthouses believed it is important to consider climate risks in designing guesthouses and that the biggest challenge was lack of information.
• Sharing more information about the risks, available design features, financial benefits and potential loss was identified as ways to encourage more people to consider these risks when designing.