MALDIVES UNDER DANGER

By BARBARA CROSSETTE, SPECIAL TO THE NEW YORK TIMES
Published: November 26, 1990

Even before the first hint of dawn outlines the offshore islands rimmed with white sand, the chugging motors of dhoni boats have announced a new day to this town.

The all-purpose craft, adapted for fishing, ferrying people or hauling freight, are rarely at rest. The Indian Ocean is everything and everywhere in the Maldives, a nation of 1,190 low-lying islands whose cowrie shells were the currency of ancient trade routes.

But if the worst-case projections of global warming become reality, rising waters could swallow the nation whole within a hundred years.

"The survival of the Maldives is at stake if present trends continue," said Hussain Shihab, the country's environmental affairs director.

The Maldivians got a glimpse of this future horror in April 1987.

"We couldn't say specifically that it was the greenhouse effect that was involved, but in that month there were very high waves, higher than anyone living here could remember," Mr. Shihab said in an interview in his office overlooking a peaceful harbor in the capital, which is home to about 44,000 of the Maldives' 214,000 people.

"Two-thirds of Male was covered in seawater," he said. "Airport runway lights were washed away and walls collapsed. There was more than $40 million of damage in a few days."

"This was the incident that triggered our concern," he said. "There was no monsoon. There were no storms in the region and no other country around us was affected."

The Maldivian Government sought the help of Japanese marine scientists, who traced the high waves of April 1987 to a storm off Australia, but could not explain why the Maldives had been affected for the first time by a weather disturbance so far away. More Tourists Come

In the last decade, the Maldivians, who are of mixed Sinhalese, Indian and Arab stock, have tasted both the blessings and drawbacks of their archipelagic isolation. Their unspoiled seas and coral reefs are beginning to lure large numbers of high-spending tourists, and the shops in the capital are full of imported goods.

"We are not a very strict Islamic society," said Abdullah Hameed, Minister of Education and chairman of the National Center for Linguistic and Historical Research. "From the beginning, people have written of the courtesy and hospitality we extend to foreigners. That still exists."

That hospitality was abused by another kind of invasion. In the early hours of Nov. 3, 1988, a waterborne mercenary band of mostly Sri Lankan Tamils working for shadowy Maldivian plotters sailed into Male harbor, came ashore and declared the Government of President Maumoon Abdul Gayoom overthrown.

The invaders were quickly put down, but many Maldivians say that since then the Government has become progressively more nervous and autocratic. President Gayoom has placed many members of his family and his wife's in high Government positions. Sent to Prison Island

According to concerned Maldivians who are keeping a record of detentions, at least five intellectuals have been banished without trial to Dhoonidhoo prison island, where they are kept in 5-by-7-foot cells. Others are missing or confined under house arrest. Businessmen critical of the regime are suffering losses in mysterious fires.

Although hounded by accusations of nepotism, corruption and the use of violence against his critics, President Gayoom this year decided to experiment with a free press as an outlet for public opinion. A few months later, after bold magazines began to flower in a society that is 95 percent literate, there was an abrupt reversal.

All but Government-sanctioned publications were outlawed and leading writers, publishers and the country's best-known cartoonist, Naushad Waheed, have been arrested. Two British journalists conducting a professional course under the auspices of the Thomson Foundation were deported. Even a student survey of conditions in a boys' reform school on Maafushi island was banned before it could be distributed.

"I think the President really wanted to open the place up," said a young Maldivian, who like most others asked not to be quoted by name for fear of retribution."But the Government is discredited. When the President opened up, he burned his hands. Now we all suffer." Worries About the Ocean

Always in the background is worry about the rising ocean.

With foreign assistance, new breakwaters and sea walls have been built, and the Gayoom Government has passed regulations prohibiting the use of explosives or trawling nets by fishermen. It has banned the mining of coral for building material around inhabited islands.

The measures are stopgap. A report prepared this year for the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said that if nothing was done to slow down global warming by the end of the 21st century, the earth's temperatures would have gone up by 5.4 degrees fahrenheit and sea levels would have risen 25.6 inches.

The Maldives have no natural elevation higher than about 15 feet above sea level, and the average altitude is about 6 feet, Mr. Shihab said.

But a small nation can do very little on its own.

"Our survival is very much dependent on what the developing countries can do in reducing their emissions of greenhouse gases," Mr. Shihab said. "And we need their help in protecting our coastal areas. It is impossible for us to build up all the islands by ourselves."