Environmental destruction opened the door for tsunami
Mangrove
forests provide a buffer between sea and land.
By G. Dunkel
The development of the tourist industry turned the
beaches of South Asia into glittering strands of white sand. It turned mangrove
forests into ponds of brackish water for the exotic shrimp that tourists like to
eat in exotic places.
And it made the poor people who live and work along
these beaches much more vulnerable to tsunami surges.
In some places, the
coral reefs that laid just offshore were destroyed to allow yachts and tour
boats to sail wherever they wanted without risk. Sometimes the coral was turned
into trinkets or decorations for the tourist trade.
Developers removed the
mangrove forests-- and even the sand dunes in some areas--from along the shore.
In the Nagapattinam district of Tamil Nadu, a state in the southern part of
India's east coast, sand dunes were removed as part of a beautification
campaign. (The Press Trust of India, Jan. 1)
In the Muthupettai lagoon in
the Tiruvarur district, where a small tract of mangrove forests was left, the
region did withstand the tsunami better.
What's so dangerous about these
acts to "improve" the shoreline? Features like palms and mangrove forests, and
even coral reefs, act like shock absorbers. They offer natural protection from
tsunamis and storm surges. In particular, mangrove forests with their
complicated roots bind the shore together, providing a shield against
destructive waves.
The Maldives are an archipelago of 1,900 coral islands,
stretching south from India's west coast. It is the lowest lying country in the
world, with an average elevation of less than 3 feet above sea level. Yet only
80 people out of 300,000 died from the tsunami, Reuters reported Jan.
9.
Doug Masson, a senior researcher at Southampton University's
Oceanography Centre in southern England, told the Jan. 8 Strait Times, "My
feeling is that coral is what probably saved the majority of people in the
Maldives." He thinks a coastal buffer helped, but wasn't a guarantee.
"The
[coral] reef broke up the tsunami and it traveled forward as a broken wave and
so was far less deadly," Masson added.
Struggle in India
In
India, poor fishers are suffering because of the bourgeoisie that develops the
Indian coast for its profit, and the transnational banks that supply
financing.
The Rev. Tom Kocherry is an Indian activist priest who founded
the National Fishworkers Forum. He who has worked against the globalization of
Indian fishing for more than 30 years. Kocherry estimates that 800,000 people
who relied on the sea are now not in their homes.
Seventy thousand houses
have been destroyed. And tens of thousands of people have lost their boats, nets
and other fishing equipment.
But the small-scale and generally poor Indian
fishers have been under threat for years, Kocherry says, because trade
liberalization policies imposed by the big imperialist powers have allowed
foreign factory fishing fleets to deplete fishing stocks.
Coastal
protection in India is nominally regulated by the Coastal Regulation Zone
provisions in the Environmental Pro tection Act, which state that at least 200
meters on the landward side of the high-tide line should be left free of
development on beaches. However, big companies have flouted the EPA to create
major developments that have destroyed much of the natural
protection.
"There are vested interests trying to persuade the government
to overturn the CRZ," according to Kocherry. "These areas should be protected by
mangroves, as nature intended. But the ministries of tourism and industry are
trying to overturn the act."
Xinhua, China's official news agency, ran a
dispatch on Jan. 6, quoting Liang Guozhao, a research fellow with the Guangzhou
institute of geography under the Guangdong Provincial Academy of Sciences. Liang
told Xinhua "China's coastal regions need to safeguard their bulwarks and, in
particular, restore their 'mangrove forests' that are known as coastal green
belts."
The Chinese coastal provinces of Guang dong, Fujian and Hainan and
Guan gxi Zhuang Autonomous Region are all prone to typhoons and deadly storms.
Reprinted from the Jan. 20, 2005, issue of Workers World newspaper
This article is copyright under a Creative Commons License.
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