Atterrare in un mangrovieto. L’impatto di un aeroporto sulla vita delle fabbricanti di corde di cocco alle Maldive

Titolo Rivista RIVISTA GEOGRAFICA ITALIANA
Autori/Curatori Beatrice Ruggeri, Alice Salimbeni, Stefano Malatesta, Marcella Schmidt di Friedberg
Anno di pubblicazione 2026 Fascicolo 2025/4
Lingua Italiano Numero pagine 21 P. 67-87 Dimensione file 0 KB
DOI 10.3280/rgioa4-2025oa21684
Il DOI è il codice a barre della proprietà intellettuale: per saperne di più clicca qui

Vedi l'articolo Scarica l'articolo open access

FrancoAngeli è membro della Publishers International Linking Association, Inc (PILA)associazione indipendente e non profit per facilitare (attraverso i servizi tecnologici implementati da CrossRef.org) l’accesso degli studiosi ai contenuti digitali nelle pubblicazioni professionali e scientifiche

In questo articolo analizziamo il caso della costruzione di un aeroporto sull’isola di Kulhudhuffushi, nel nord delle Maldive, e la conseguente distruzione di una delle più grandi foreste di mangrovie del paese come esempio emblematico degli effetti diseguali e genderizzati delle politiche infrastrutturali. La sostituzione del mangrovieto con l’aeroporto, infatti, ha compromesso le vite delle fabbricanti di corde di cocco dell’isola che lavoravano nell’area umida, ha prodotto danni economici importanti e destabilizzato la loro infrastruttura sociale. Attraverso un approccio femminista e un focus sull’esperienza quotidiana, evidenziamo come, nel caso specifico, uno sviluppo infrastrutturale miope abbia trasformato in modo profondo le ecologie e le dinamiche socio-economiche dell’isola, accentuando le vulnerabilità preesistenti.

Parole chiave:infrastrutture, donne, land reclamation, mangrovie, geografia femminista, Maldive.

  1. Holdaway A., Ford M., Owen S. (2021). Global-scale changes in the area of atoll islands during the 21st century. Anthropocene, 33: 1100282. DOI: 10.1016/j.ancene.2021.100282
  2. Philips R., Soederberg S. (2023). Making and Mastering Violent Environments: Following the Infrastructures of Accumulation in Coastal Louisiana. DOI: 10.1111/anti.12883
  3. Bondi L. (2005). Making Connections and Thinking Through Emotions: Between Geography and Psychotherapy. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 4(30): 433-448.
  4. Abdulla A., Schmidt Di Friedberg M. (2022). Textiles as Heritage in the Maldives. In: Xinfeng Y., Lihong C., Hafeezullah M., a cura di, Textile and Fashion Education Internationalization (pp. 145-74). Textile Science and Clothing Technology. Singapore: Springer Nature Singapore. DOI 10.1007/978-981-16-8854-6_8.
  5. Anand N., Gupta A., Appel H. (2018). The Promise of Infrastructure. Duke University Press. DOI 10.1215/9781478002031.
  6. Barca S. (2020). Forces of Reproduction. Notes for a Counter-Hegemonic Anthropocene. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  7. Borghi V. (2024). Infrastrutture: un metodo di lavoro per un cantiere di ricerca. In: Borghi V., Leonardi E., a cura di, Il sociale messo in forma. Le infrastrutture come cose, processi e logiche della vita collettiva. Napoli: Orthotes.
  8. Both ENDS et al. (2024). Dredging Destruction. Human rights violation and Environmental Destruction in international dredging projects insured by the Dutch state. <a href="https://savemaldives.net/main/wp-content/uploads/Dredging-destruction-Both-Ends.pdf">https://savemaldives.net/main/wp-content/uploads/Dredging-destruction-Both-Ends.pdf</a>.
  9. Chase-Lubitz J. (2024). The Maldives is racing to create new land. Why are so many people concerned?. Nature, 628: 704-708. www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-01157-7.pdf.
  10. Datta D., Gabriel C. et al. (2021). Considering Socio-Political Framings When Analyzing Coastal Climate Change Effects Can Prevent Maldevelopment on Small Islands. Nature Communications, 12(1): 5882. DOI 10.1038/s41467-021-26082-5.
  11. Dunlap A. (2021). The Politics of Ecocide, Genocide and Megaprojects: Interrogating Natural Resource Extraction, Identity and the Normalization of Erasure. Journal of Genocide Research, 23(2): 212-235. DOI: 10.1080/14623528.2020.1754051
  12. Duvat V.K.E. (2020). Human-Driven Atoll Island Expansion in the Maldives. Anthropocene, 32 (dicembre): 100265. DOI: 10.1016/j.ancene.2020.100265
  13. El-Horr J., Rohini P.P. (2016). Understanding Gender in Maldives: Toward Inclusive Development. Directions in Development-Countries and Regions. Washington, DC: World Bank.
  14. Enns C., Bersaglio B. (2020). On the Coloniality of “New” Mega-Infrastructure Projects in East Africa. Antipode, 52(1): 101-123. DOI: 10.1111/anti.12582
  15. EPA (2017). EIA for the Airport Development Project at Haa Dhaalu Kulhudhuffushi. <a href="https://portal.epa.gov.mv/files/attachments/2017/10/68ca06f1c9b49c3c80c43162ac807ff697d32d29.pdf">https://portal.epa.gov.mv/files/attachments/2017/10/68ca06f1c9b49c3c80c43162ac807ff697d32d29.pdf</a>.
  16. Fallati L. et al. (2017). Land Use and Land Cover (LULC) of the Republic of the Maldives: First National Map and LULC Change Analysis Using Remote-Sensing Data. Environmental Monitoring and Assessment, 189(8): 417. DOI: 10.1007/s10661-017-6120-2
  17. Gaini F., Pristed Nielsen H. (2020). Gender and Island Communities. Gender in a Global-Local World. Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon New York, NY: Routledge.
  18. Graham S., Hewitt L. (2013). Getting off the Ground: On the Politics of Urban Verticality. Progress in Human Geography, 37(1): 72-92. DOI: 10.1177/0309132512443147
  19. Graham S., Simon M. (2001). Splintering Urbanism: Networked Infrastructures, Technological Mobilities and the Urban Condition. 1a ed. London: Routledge. DOI: 10.4324/9780203452202
  20. Gray S. (2023). In the Shadow of the Seawall. Coastal injustice and the dilemma of placekeeping. Oakland: University of California Press.
  21. Hamilton Z., Neimanis (2021). Feminist Infrastructure for Better Weathering. www.tandfonline.com/action/showCitFormats?oi=10.1080/08164649.2021.1969639.
  22. Harcourt W., Nelson I.L., a cura di (2015). Practising Feminist Political Ecologies: Moving beyond the «Green Economy». Gender, Development and Environment. London: Zed Books.
  23. Hay P. (2006). A phenomenology of islands. Island Studies Journal, 1(1): 19-42.
  24. Hayes-Conroy J., Hayes-Conroy A. (2013). Veggies and Visceralities: A Political Ecology of Food and Feeling. Emotion, Space and Society, 6 (febbraio): 81-90. DOI: 10.1016/j.emospa.2011.11.003
  25. Houston D., Pulido L. (2002). The Work of Performativity: Staging Social Justice at the University of Southern California. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 20 (4): 401-424. DOI: 10.1068/d344
  26. Human Rights Watch (2023). “We Still Haven’t Recovered” Local Communities Harmed by Reclamation Projects in the Maldives. www.hrw.org/sites/default/files/media_2023/10/maldives1023web.pdf.
  27. Kaika M., Swyngedouw E. (2000). Fetishizing the modern city: The phantasmagoria of urban technological networks. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 24(1): 120-138. DOI: 10.1111/1468-2427.00239.2450
  28. Karides M. (2016). Why Island Feminism?. Shima: The International Journal of Research into Island Cultures, 11(1). DOI: 10.21463/shima.11.1.06
  29. Karides M., Rodríguez-Coss N. (2022). Island Feminisms in/on Island Studies: Place, Justice, Movement. Shima: The International Journal of Research into Island Cultures, 16(1). DOI: 10.21463/shima.153
  30. Kathiresan K., Bingham B.L. (2001). Biology of Mangroves and Mangrove Ecosystems.
  31. Advances in Marine Biology, 40: 81-251. Elsevier. DOI: 10.1016/S0065-2881(01)40003-4
  32. Larkin B. (2013). The Politics and Poetics of Infrastructure. Annual Review of Anthropology, 42: 327-343. DOI: 10.1146/annurev-anthro-092412-155522
  33. Latham A., Layton J. (2022). Social Infrastructure: Why It Matters and How Urban Geographers Might Study It. Urban Geography, 43(5): 659-668. DOI: 10.1080/02723638.2021.2003609
  34. Lesutis G., Kaika M. (2024). Infrastructure bodies: Between violence and fugitivity. Progress in Human Geography, 48(4): 458-474. DOI: 10.1177/03091325241232156
  35. MacGregor S. (2009). A Stranger Silence Still: The Need for Feminist Social Research on Climate Change. The Sociological Review, 57(2_suppl): 124-140. DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-954X.2010.01889.x
  36. MacGregor S., a cura di (2017). Routledge handbook of gender and environment. Routledge international handbooks. London; New York: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group.
  37. Malatesta S., Schmidt di Friedberg M., Zubair B., Mohamed (2021). Atolls of the Maldives: Nissology and Geography. Rethinking the Island. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield.
  38. Maldives Independent (2017). Environmentalists cry foul as Kulhudhuffushi airport project begins. <a href="https://maldivesindependent.com/environment/environmentalists-cry-foul-askulhudhuffushi-airport-project-begins-133763&sa=D&source=docs&ust=1734523225516676&usg=AOvVaw2OEHtGB1W6Fyy-DpZo_gQn">https://maldivesindependent.com/environment/environmentalists-cry-foul-askulhudhuffushi-airport-project-begins-133763&sa=D&source=docs&ust=1734523225516676&usg=AOvVaw2OEHtGB1W6Fyy-DpZo_gQn</a>.
  39. Mangroves Action Programme (MAP) (2019). Preliminary site survey of Kulhudhuffushi mangroves. Report to the Ministry of Environment, Republic of Maldives. www.environment.gov.mv/v2/en/download/9492.
  40. Massey D. (1994). Space, Place, and Gender.
  41. Middleton J., Samanani F. (2021). Accounting for Care within Human Geography. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 46(1): 29-43. DOI: 10.1111/tran.12403
  42. Mies M., Shiva V. (2014). Ecofeminism. London: Zed Books.
  43. Ministry of Economic Development and Trade (2024). Development of Domestic Airports. <a href="https://investmaldives.gov.mv/download/projects/Development%20of%20Domestic%20Airports.pdf">https://investmaldives.gov.mv/download/projects/Development%20of%20Domestic%20Airports.pdf</a>.
  44. Ministry of Environment and Energy (2015). Guidance Manual for Climate Risk Resilient Coastal Protection in the Maldives. www.environment.gov.mv/v2/en/download/13722.
  45. Piedalue A.D. (2022). Slow Nonviolence: Muslim Women Resisting the Everyday Violence of Dispossession and Marginalization. Environment and Planning C: Politics and Space, 40(2): 373-390. DOI: 10.1177/2399654419882721
  46. Plumwood V., a cura di (1993). Feminism and the Mastery of Nature. Opening Out. London New York: Routledge.
  47. Rap E., Jaskolski M. (2019). The lives of women in a land reclamation project: gender, class, culture and place in Egyptian land and water management. DOI: 10.18352/ijc.919
  48. Resurrección P.B. (2017). Gender and Environment in the Global South. From ‘women, environment, and development’ to feminist political ecology. In MacGregor S., a cura di, Routledge handbook of gender and environment. Routledge international handbooks. London; New York: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group.
  49. Rocheleau D., Thomas-Slayter B., Wangari E. (2020). 4. Gender and Environment: A Feminist Political Ecology Perspective. In: Haenn N., Harnish A., Wilk R., a cura di, The Environment in Anthropology (Second Edition) (pp. 34-40). New York University Press. DOI: 10.18574/nyu/9781479862689.003.0008
  50. Sandilands C. (1999). The Good-Natured Feminist: Ecofeminism and the Quest for Democracy. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
  51. SaveMaldives (2018). Irreversible Damage, Destruction & Loss. <a href="https://savemaldives.net/publications/">https://savemaldives.net/publications/</a>.
  52. SaveMaldives (2019). Conserving Kulhudhuffushi Kulhi: The current status of the remaining part and why this wetland and mangrove ecosystem must be conserved. <a href="https://savemaldives.net/publications/">https://savemaldives.net/publications/</a>.
  53. Schmidt di Friedberg M., Abdulla A. (2021). The Gender Dimension of Environment in the Maldives. In: Atolls of the Maldives Nissology and Geography.
  54. Schmidt Di Friedberg M., Malatesta S., dell’Agnese E. (2021). Hazard, Resilience and Development: The Case of Two Maldivian Islands. Bollettino della Società Geografica Italiana, luglio, 11-24. DOI: 10.36253/bsgi-1087
  55. Shadiya F. (2021). Governance, Activism, and Environment in the Maldives. In: Atolls of the Maldives Nissology and Geography. Shiva V. (2016a). Soil, Not Oil: Climate Change, Peak Oil and Food Insecurity. London: Zed Books.
  56. Shiva V. (2016b). Staying Alive: Women, Ecology, and Development. Berkeley, California: North Atlantic Books.
  57. Siemiatycki M., Enright T., Valverde M. (2020). The Gendered Production of Infrastructure. Progress in Human Geography, 44(2): 297-314. DOI: 10.1177/0309132519828458
  58. Simone A. (2004). People as Infrastructure: Intersecting Fragments in Johannesburg. Public Culture, 16(3): 407-429. DOI: 10.1215/08992363-16-3-407
  59. Small S.F., Van Der Meulen Rodgers Y. (2023). The Gendered Effects of Investing in Physical and Social Infrastructure. World Development, 171: 106347. DOI: 10.1016/j.worlddev.2023.106347
  60. Sultana F. (2020). Embodied Intersectionalities of Urban Citizenship: Water, Infrastructure, and Gender in the Global South. Annals of the American Association of Geographers, 110(5): 1407-1424. DOI: 10.1080/24694452.2020.1715193
  61. Tassadiq F. (2024). Colonial Laws, Postcolonial Infrastructures: Land Acquisition, Urban Informality, and Politics of Infrastructural Development in Pakistan. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 42(3): 401-421. DOI: 10.1177/02637758241240363
  62. Tókadóttir Dahl S. (2020). Building tunnels, burning bridges. A feminist critical discourse analysis on the gender-infrastructure nexus in the case of planning inter-island linkages on the Faroe Islands.
  63. Truelove Y., Ruszczyk H.A. (2022). Bodies as Urban Infrastructure: Gender, Intimate Infrastructures and Slow Infrastructural Violence. Political Geography, 92 (gennaio): 102492. DOI: 10.1016/j.polgeo.2021.102492
  64. Truscello M. (2020). Infrastructural Brutalism: Art and the Necropolitics of Infrastructure. The MIT Press. DOI: 10.7551/mitpress/10905.001.0001
  65. Uthema (2017). Concerns regarding the project to reclaim Kulhudhuhfushi white mud mangrove by the Government of Maldives, November 7, 2017, <a href="https://uthema.org/pressstatement-07nov17/">https://uthema.org/pressstatement-07nov17/</a>.
  66. Wilson A. (2016). The Infrastructure of Intimacy. Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 41(2): 247-280. DOI: 10.1086/682919
  67. World Bank (2024). Maldives Country Environmental Analysis. https://documents1. worldbank.org/curated/en/099021524234511634/pdf/P1784891f12d1a0cd18d5516f8fcf6ceaf4.pdf.
  68. Zuhair M.H., Kurian P.A. (2016). Socio-Economic and Political Barriers to Public Participation in EIA: Implications for Sustainable Development in the Maldives. Impact Assessment and Project Appraisal, 34(2): 129-142. DOI: 10.1080/14615517.2016.1176404

Beatrice Ruggeri, Alice Salimbeni, Stefano Malatesta, Marcella Schmidt di Friedberg, Atterrare in un mangrovieto. L’impatto di un aeroporto sulla vita delle fabbricanti di corde di cocco alle Maldive in "RIVISTA GEOGRAFICA ITALIANA" 4/2025, pp 67-87, DOI: 10.3280/rgioa4-2025oa21684