Ramon Magsaysay Laureate Fights to Keep Maldives’ Paradise from Drowning

For most of the world, the Maldives is paradise, a scattering of white-sand islands surrounded by turquoise seas that lure millions of visitors each year. But for Maldivian environmentalist Shaahina Ali, paradise is also a warning.

“The typhoon that you [Filipinos] had today… yesterday would have taken a hundred percent of the Maldives,” she said. “We are one percent land, we are 99 percent water. So paradise is the ocean for me.”

Ali, who leads Parley Maldives, has spent years protecting the ocean that defines her homeland. Her work earned her the 2025 Ramon Magsaysay Award for transformative leadership, not for commanding institutions, but for building trust among communities, schools, and businesses to confront plastic pollution and climate vulnerability.

Delivering a lecture at the 67th Ramon Magsaysay Awards Festival Season in Manila, Ali said the fight for the ocean is also a fight for survival.

“Protecting paradise,” she said, “means protecting life itself.”

Under Ali’s leadership, Parley Maldives implements the AIR strategy, Avoid, Intercept, Redesign, a model that goes beyond waste collection.

“We believe plastic is a design failure,” Parley’s statement reads. “To fix it, we must reinvent the material itself.”

Ali said that while recycling has helped raise awareness, it is not the ultimate solution.

“Recycling is a temporary fix,” she said. “It has to be something of the past. The future is in biochemistry and biofabrication.”

Parley has worked with schools, resorts, and private companies to intercept plastic before it enters the sea. In schools, she said, the movement spreads faster.

“You teach the children, and you reach their parents and the staff; it becomes a community effort.”

The Maldives’ geographical reality makes the urgency clearer than anywhere else. Rising sea levels threaten to submerge its islands within a century, while growing piles of plastic waste spill into lagoons, killing coral reefs and fish that sustain local communities.

Suzanne E. Siskel, vice chairperson of the Ramon Magsaysay Award Foundation Board of Trustees, said the Maldives’ beauty now hides a deeper crisis.

“For many of us, the Maldives evokes images of turquoise water and vibrant coral reefs,” she said. “But for the Maldivian people, that same beauty is now the frontline of climate vulnerability. Marine systems once considered among the world’s richest are under threat, and rising sea levels are not a forecast but a reality, shaping their policy, economy, and survival.”

Siskel said Ali stands out for her systems approach, connecting technology, policy, and people.

“She bridges gaps through action and policy engagement,” Siskel said. “She demonstrates that environmental protection requires not only technical solutions but also trust-building, education, and collective ownership of the problem.”

Ali’s award comes as world leaders once again failed to reach a consensus on a global plastics treaty in Geneva last August. The proposed agreement seeks to end plastic pollution by cutting production and banning toxic additives, but talks have repeatedly stalled.

For Ali, such setbacks underline why leadership must start from the ground up.

“We cannot wait for others to decide for us,” she said. “The ocean is our life, our food, our home. Protecting it is not charity. It is survival.”

During her lecture, she pointed to a photo of a young boy wading through a waterway filled with trash, an image she said most people have learned to ignore.

“You just scroll through it,” she said. “It doesn’t even talk to you anymore, these pictures. We are so disconnected in a connected world.”

Ali’s message resonates far beyond her country’s shores. For her, the Maldives is not merely a tourist destination but a glimpse of the world’s future if no action is taken. The rising seas threatening her islands will soon reach others. The plastics washing into her lagoons are the same that flow from every corner of the planet.

In recognizing Ali, the Ramon Magsaysay Foundation honored a vision of leadership rooted in persistence, empathy, and innovation.

“She’s not waiting for perfect conditions or a grand mandate,” Siskel said. “She’s working steadily, collaboratively, and creatively, showing that meaningful change is built by people who care and persist.”

For Ali, protecting paradise means protecting the planet itself, not through fear, but through hope, science, and the belief that even the smallest island can spark a global wave of change.