1/01/05

Reports about Asia's tragic tsunami correctly say it was caused by an earthquake, but miss out our role in making it worse. There is nothing new in tidal waves and storm surges hitting coastlines; where possible traditional communities avoid living on the beach because of this. This tsunami was so damaging because of commercial coastal development and the destruction of protective coastal ecosystems (i).

In the last three years I have worked on a number of occasions with Indian Ocean coastal communities in East Africa and Pakistan, helping them re-establish sustainable management of their fragile environments of mangrove swamps, coral reefs and sandy beaches.  It is a cruel blow that such communities, already struggling with sea level rise, competition from foreign fishing fleets and clearing of mangroves for prawn farming, should have to deal with yet another calamity.

We need to seriously address climate change (ii), deforestation and global inequality, or massive man-abetted natural disasters will increasingly become the norm. Our current economic system and ever more globalisation and unfair world trade is failing us, failing poor communities and failing the Earth.

We need a different approach. Policies that protect and rebuild all local economies rather than gearing economies to ruthlessly out-compete each other internationally. Policies that lead to restoring mangroves, coral reefs and other natural coastal ecosystems while restricting coastal development. In short policies that put people and planet before profit.

Martin Whiteside
Stroud District Councillor and Green Party Parliamentary Candidate.

(i) When a tsunami comes in, it first hits the coral reef which slows it down, then the mangroves which further slow it down. It may get through that but by then a lot of the energy has already been dissipated. However vast coral reefs have been destroyed, by over-harvest and dynamite fishing, while mangroves have been removed for shrimp farming.

(ii) Climate change is raising sea levels; 10-20 cm over the past century and it is expected this century's increases will be even greater. Higher sea levels mean greater damage and not just from tsunami.