 a little over 100 dead. Coral reef absorbs the sea's fury by breaking the waves. The tragedy however is that more than 70 per cent of world's coral reef has already been destroyed.
The island chain of Surin off the west coast of Thailand similarly escaped heavy destruction. The ring of coral reef that surrounds the islands did receive some punching from the furious waves but kept firm and thereby helped break the lethal power of the tsunami. Mangroves help to protect offshore coral reefs by filtering out the silt flowing seawards from the land. Tourism growth, whether in the name of eco-tourism or leisure tourism, decimated the mangroves and destroyed the coral reefs.
If only the mangroves were intact, the damage from the tsunamis would have been greatly minimized. Ecologists tell us that mangroves provide double protection – the first layer of red mangroves with their flexible branches and tangled roots hanging in the coastal waters absorb the first shock waves. The second layer of tall black mangroves than operates like a wall withstanding much of the sea's fury. Mangroves in addition absorb more carbon dioxide per unit area than ocean phytoplankton, a critical factor in global warming.
It happened earlier in Bangladesh. In 1960, a tsunami wave hit the coast in an area where mangroves were intact. There was not a single human loss. These mangroves were subsequently cut down and replaced with shrimp farms. In 1991, thousands of people were killed when a tsunami of the same magnitude hit the same region. In Tamil Nadu, in south India, Pichavaram and Muthupet with dense mangroves suffered low human casualties and less economic damage from the Dec 26 tsunami. Earlier, the famed mangroves of Bhiterkanika in Orissa (which also serve as the breeding ground for the Olive-Ridley turtles) had reduced the impact of the ‘super cyclone' that had struck in Oct 1999, killing over 10,000 people and rendering millions homeless.
The epicentre of the Dec 26 killer tsunami was close to Simeulue Island, in Indonesia. The death toll on this particular island was significantly low simply because the inhabitants had the traditional knowledge about tsunami that invariably happened after a quake. In Nias island, which is close to Simeulue island, mangroves had acted like a wall helping people from the destruction. The challenge therefore for the developing countries is to learn from the time-tested technologies that have been perfected by the local communities.
Let us now look at the comparative advantage of protecting environment and thereby reducing the havoc from the growth-oriented market economy. Having grown tenfold in the last 15 years, shrimp farming is now a $9 billion industry. It is estimated that shrimp consumption in North America, Japan and Western Europe has increased by 300 per cent within the last ten years. The massive wave of destruction caused by the Dec 26 tsunami in 11 Asian countries alone has surpassed the economic gain that the shrimp industry claims to have harvested by several times. With over 1,50,000 people dead, the staggering social and economic loss will take some time to be ascertained.
World governments have so far pledged US$4 billion in aid. This does not including the billions that are being spent by relief agencies. World Bank has in addition considering boosting the aid packet to US$1.5 billion. It has already given (by Jan 10, 2005) US$175 million, and bank President James Wolfensohn has been quoted as saying: “We can go up to even $1 billion to $1.5 billion depending on the needs…” In addition, the World Food Programme (WFP) plans to feed some 2 million survivors for the next six months. The feeding operation is likely to cost US$180 million. If only successive presidents of the World Bank had refrained from aggressively promoted ecologically unsound but market friendly economic policies, a lot of human lives and the resulting costs could have been saved.
What did the world gain from pushing in market reforms with utter disregard to environment and human lives? Can Wolfensohn justify the financial backi