Where the Waters Are Rising

A close-up look at the low-lying Maldives, where global warming hits the seawall

By J. Madeleine Nash Monday, Apr. 18, 2005
    • DILIP MEHTA / CONTACT FOR TIME

    CITY ON A LILY PAD: On the capital island of Male, where 80,000 people live less than 4 ft. above sea level, the margin of safety is increasingly slim

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    The reason? Healthy reefs are capable of growing upward in response to higher sea levels. But when ocean temperatures rise too high, coral polyps become susceptible to a disease known as bleaching, so-called because it involves loss of the symbiotic algae that not only provide the polyps with essential nutrition but also color their tissues. Like a fever, bleaching is not necessarily fatal, but can be if ocean temperatures stay too high for too long. That's what happened seven years ago, when a prolonged heightening of sea-surface temperatures, triggered by the 1997-1998 El Niño, ripped through the Indian Ocean like a forest fire. In some areas, coral mortality approached 70%. The reefs are recovering, says Abdul Azeez Abdul Hakeem, director of conservation for the Banyan Tree resort, but no one knows what will happen to them as the world's oceans continue to warm.

    In some ways, the 1998 bleaching epidemic was almost as shocking as the damage inflicted by the tsunami, for the reefs are more than passive bulwarks against the sea; they are also the beating heart of the country's economy. The reefs provide habitat for the baitfish used by the local tuna fishery, and their underwater beauty lures hordes of foreign tourists. "If your heart stops beating, can you survive?" asks Ahmed Shaheed, the Maldives' chief government spokesman.

    STAY OR MOVE?

    the village of Naalaafushi seems like a place out of time, where people drowse through the heat of the day beneath the shade of hibiscus trees and coconut palms. It's a charming island. It's also extremely small, not much more than a quarter-mile across. From the sandy street that runs through the center of town, you can see both the brilliant turquoise of the interior lagoon and, on the other side, waves breaking on the shallow reef that faces the Indian Ocean. There are dozens of islands like Naalaafushi in the Maldives--too many, say government officials, to provide with essential services, let alone shore up against the sea. In time, they hope, the residents of these islands (some of which have populations of not much more than 100 people) will be enticed to move to larger, more secure places like Hulhumalé, an artificial island being built from scratch just across the lagoon from the capital. Hulhumalé is rather barren looking, but it has one very attractive feature--it towers more than 6 ft. above sea level, twice the elevation of most of Malé.

    Other ambitious projects are in the works as well, says Hamdun Hameed, Minister of Planning and National Development, pulling out a map of the islands, each one a dot on a ring of reef--an atoll--that traces out the shape of the mountain on which it formed. Here, Hameed notes, is the island of Kandholhudoo, whose residents experienced chronic flooding whenever high tides coincided with heavy monsoon rains. The last straw was the tsunami, which rendered all but eight of some 500 homes uninhabitable. Now, at the request of village leaders, the government is drawing up plans to move everyone to Dhuvaafaru, an uninhabited island about 12 miles away.

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