l 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 backing doled out to the aquaculture and tourism sectors by drawing a balance sheet of the costs and benefits, including the social cost involved? Take the shrimp farms, for instance. The life cycle of a shrimp farm is a maximum of two to five years. The ponds are then abandoned leaving behind toxic waste, destroyed ecosystems and displaced communities, annihilating livelihoods. The farms come up at the cost of natural eco-systems including mangroves. The whole cycle is then repeated in another pristine coastal area. It has been estimated that economic losses due to the shrimp farms are approximately five times the potential earnings.
Tourism is no better. Kerala in south India, marketed as “God's own country”, destroyed the mangroves in a desperate bid to lure the tourists. It is only after tsunami struck that the state government was quick to announce an Rs 340-million project aimed at insulating the Kerala coastline against tidal surges. Other tourist destinations in Asia will now probably go for a rethinking. The question therefore that needs to be asked is whether we need to extract a heavy human toll before we realize the follies of blindly aping the stupid market economy mantra? How many more people we want to die and how many millions we want to go homeless before we realize the grave mistake of pushing in the market economy? Who will hold these free market economists responsible for the human loss and suffering? #
(Devinder Sharma is a New Delhi-based food and agriculture policy analyst. Responses can be mailed to: firstname.lastname@example.org )
The first lesson is about development in coastal regions. Respect for the fragility and vulnerability of coastal ecosystems has been sacrificed for hotels and holiday resorts, shrimp farms and refineries. Mangroves and coral reefs have been relentlessly destroyed, taking away the protective barriers. Our study of the Orissa cyclone in India in 1999, which killed 30,000 people, found that the destruction was much more severe where the mangroves had been cut down for 