Maldives Parliament speaker Muhammad Nasheed posted an article on his official twitter account claiming that Maldives had spent USD2.5 billion (MVR 38.5 billion) on adaptations to climate change. As per Speaker Nasheed’s claim 50% estimate would amount to MVR 19.2 billion.

Debunked Source

https://twitter.com/MohamedNasheed/status/1495711471573303297

Fact Check

In order to verify the claim, we checked for Maldives national budget 2021-22 and we found that in 2022 budget, the Maldives government allocated total of MVR 1,543 million on environmental protection.

As per allocated budget for Environmental protection we found that in 2021 1.856.3 Million MVR was spend on environment, while 1.553 million MVR was allocated for environment protection in 2022 which is 4% of the total revenue of 24,280 MVR for the year 2022. We also found older tweet of Mohammad Nasheed from 2020 in which he informed that over 80% of the budget will be used to repay Chinese Debt in the next year.

Source

https://www.budget.gov.mv/en#:~:text=The%202022%20Budget%20allocates%20a,biodiversity%20and%20landscape%2C%20among%20others.

https://2021.budget.gov.mv/en

Rating

Disinformation/ Misleading

Conclusion

Our research confirmed that the claim made by Maldives Parliament speaker Muhammad Nasheed is baseless and misleading. As per allocated budget for Environmental protection in 2021, 1.856.3 Million MVR was spent on environment, while 1.553 million MVR was allocated for environment protection in 2022.

ABCDE Framework-Based Analysis 

Actor	Maldives Parliament speaker Muhammad Nasheed has posted a fake news from his verified twitter account.
Behavior	Muhammad Nasheed posted baseless information claiming Maldives had spent USD2.5 billion (MVR 38.5 billion) on adaptations to climate change.
Content	Social Media post.
Degree	The target of the claim was to portray the positive policy of his government towards environment protection in Maldives. Currently, four major environmental issues in the Maldives include beach erosion, coral mining, population issues, freshwater resources, waste disposal and sewage disposal.
Effect	Maldives is facing dire sea level rise threat. The islands could be 80% uninhabitable by 2050. The effect of spreading disinformation about environmental protection is that the general public of Maldives and the rest of the world believe that the Maldives government is turning to climate protection and making every possible effort to minimize the risks, while actually this is far from reality.