Planning for Survival: How Can an Archipelago Island Nation Like Maldives Benefit from Spatial Planning?

Spatial planning can be defined as the approaches used by the public sector authorities to influence the distribution of resources and activities in spaces of various types and scale. Today, spatial planning is practiced and being adopted by many countries. However, lack of a formal and comprehensive spatial planning system in the country is leading the present pace of development in Maldives unsustainable. The purpose of this study is to propose relevant changes to the Maldives planning system in order to deal with the problems and threats identified for the short, medium, long run and assure a sustainable future. This study integrated an exploratory approach by exploring different existing literature related to the study area and developed a case study on Maldives. Interviews were conducted with relevant stakeholders to get further in-depth of spatial planning application in Maldives. The overall result shows that there is significant lack of academic research on spatial planning to cover the context of small island nations. Additionally, spatial planning can play a major role in the development of Maldives. Finally, a spatial planning system formulated for Maldives should be tailor-made to the context of Maldives and benchmarked to well-recognized spatial planning systems and practices to accommodate the singularities and specificities of the country.