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Environmental destruction opened the door for tsunami
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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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