Article Summary:

At the recent Rio+20 conference, Maldives President Waheed announced that the whole of the Maldives will become a marine reserve by 2017. This would outlaw all “non-sustainable” fishing practices and will specifically “exclude deep-sea, purse-seining and other destructive [trawling] techniques.” Although it is uncertain as to what area the proclamation will contain, environmental activists are hoping that it will include the entire Maldives Exclusive Economic Zone, which is the area of sea that can be claimed by a country to exploit its marine resources, to a limit of 200 nautical miles around its coasts.