Expert views of climate change adaptation in the Maldives Benjamin K. Sovacool Received: 14 July 2010 / Accepted: 15 December 2011 / Published online: 11 January 2012 # Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2012 Abstract This essay assesses the “Integrating Climate Change Risks into Resilient Island Planning in the Maldives” Program, or ICCR, a four-year $9.3 million adaptation project supported by the Least Developed Countries Fund, Maldivian Government and the United Nations Development Program. The essay elaborates on the types of challenges that arise as a low-income country tries to utilize international development assistance to adapt to climate change. Based primarily on a series of semi-structured research interviews with Maldivian experts, discussed benefits to the ICCR include improving physical resilience by deploying “soft” infrastructure, institutional resilience by training policymakers, and community resil- ience by strengthening assets. Challenges include ensuring that adaptation efforts are sufficient to reduce vulnerability, lack of coordination, and the values and attitudes of business and community leaders. 1 Introduction Numerous conditions place the Maldives at grim risk to climate-change related variations in sea level, precipitation, sea surface temperature, storm activity, swell waves, and ocean acidification (United Nations Development Program 2007a). The small size of its islands, their low elevation, narrow width, and dispersed nature of coral reefs and atolls make it susceptible to flooding during storms. Roughly 50% of all human structures in the entire country are less than 100 m from the shore as well as 70% of critical infrastructure such as hospices, government buildings, sewage systems, and ports. The Global Environment Facility (2009a: 3) has stated that “no settlement on the Maldives is entirely safe from the predicted impacts of climate change.” Khan et al. (2002) have also described the Maldives as “flattest country on earth” and gone so far as to call it “extremely vulnerable” to climate Climatic Change (2012) 114:295–300 DOI 10.1007/s10584-011-0392-2 B. K. Sovacool (*) Vermont Law School, Institute for Energy & the Environment, PO Box 96, 164 Chelsea Street, South Royalton, VT 05068-0444, USA e-mail: Bsovacool@vermontlaw.edu B. K. Sovacool e-mail: sovacool@vt.edu