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Date: Wed, 12 Jan 2005 09:44:07 -0000

By Devinder Sharma

As the first news reports of the devastation caused by the tsunami killer
waves began to pour in, a newsreader on Aaj Tak's Headline Today television
channel asked his correspondent reporting from the scene of destruction in
Tamil Nadu in south of India : "Any idea about how much is the loss to
business? Can you find that out because that would be more important for our
business leaders?"

Little did the newscaster realise or even know that the tsunami disaster,
which eventually turned out to be a catastrophe, was more or less the
outcome of faulty business and economics. The magnitude of the disaster was
only exacerbated by the neoliberal economic policies that pushed economic
growth at the expense of human life. It was the outcome of an insane
economic system - led by the World Bank and IMF - that believes in usurping
environment, nature and human lives for the sake of unsustainable economic
growth for a few.

Since the 1960s, the Asian sea-coast region has been plundered by the large
industrialised shrimp firms that brought environmentally-unfriendly
aquaculture to its sea shores. Shrimp cultivation, rising to over 8 billion
tonnes a year in the year 2000, had already played havoc with the fragile
eco-systems. The 'rape-and-run' industry, as the Food and Agricultural
Organisation of the United Nations (FAO) once termed it, was largely funded
by the World Bank. Nearly 72 per cent of the shrimp farming is confined to
Asia.

The expansion of shrimp farming was at the cost of tropical mangroves --
amongst the world's most important ecosystems. Each acre of mangrove forest
destroyed results in an estimated 676 pounds loss in marine harvest.
Mangrove swamps have been nature's protection for the coastal regions from
the large waves, weathering the impact of cyclones, and serving as a nursery
for three-fourth of the commercial fish species that spend part of their
life cycle in the mangrove swamps. Mangroves in any case were one of the
world's most threatened habitats but instead of replanting the mangrove
swamps, faulty economic policies only hastened its disappearance. Despite
warning by ecologists and environmentalists, the World Bank turned a deaf
ear.

Shrimp farming continued its destructive spree, eating away more than half
of the world's mangroves. Since the 1960's, for instance, aquaculture in
Thailand resulted in a loss of over 65,000 hectares of mangroves. In
Indonesia, Java lost 70 per cent of its mangroves, Sulawesi 49 per cent and
Sumatra 36 per cent. So much so that at the time the tsunami struck in all
its fury, logging companies were busy axing mangroves in the Aceh province
of Indonesia for exports to Malaysia and Singapore.

In India, mangrove cover has been reduced to less than a third of its
original in the past three decades. Between 1963 and 1977, the period when
aquaculture industry took roots, India destroyed nearly 50 per cent of its
mangroves. Local communities were forcibly evicted to make way for the
shrimp farms. In Andhra Pradesh, more than 50,000 people were forcibly
removed and millions displaced to make room for the aquaculture farms.
Whatever remained of the mangroves was cut down by the hotel industry. Aided
and abetted by the Ministry of Environment and Forests and the Ministry of
Industries, builders moved in to ravage the coastline.

Five-star hotels, golf courses, industries, and mansions sprung up all along
disregarding the concern being expressed by environmentalists. These two
ministries worked overtime to dilute the Coastal Regulation Zone (CRZ) norms
thereby allowing the hotels to even take over the 500 meter buffer that was
supposed to be maintained along the beach. In an era of market economy, that
was reflected through misplaced Shining India slogan, the bureaucrats are in
league with the industrialists and big business interests. Much of the
responsibility for the huge death toll therefore rests with the government
and the free market apologists.

Tourism boom in the Asia-Pacific region coincided with the destructive
fallout of the growth in shrimp cultivation. Over the last decade, tourist
arrivals and receipts rose faster than any other region in the world, almost
twice the rates of industrialized countries. Projections for the year 2010
indicate that the region will surpass the Americas to become the world's
number two tourism region, with 229 million arrivals. What is being
projected as an indicator of spectacular economic growth hides the enormous
environmental costs that these countries have suffered and will have to
undergo in future.

In the past two decades, the entire coastline along the Bay of Bengal,
Arabian Sea, and Strait of Malacca in the Indian Ocean and all along the
South Pacific Ocean has been a witness to massive investments in tourism and
hotels. Myanmar and Maldives suffered very less from the killing spree of
the tsunami because the tourism industry had so far not spread its tentacles
to the virgin mangroves and coral reefs surrounding the coastline. The large
coral reef surrounding the islands of Maldives absorbed much of the tidal
fury thereby restricting the human loss to 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 tsunami 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 epicenter of the Dec 26 killer tsunami was close to Simeuleu 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
the Simeuleu 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) $ 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 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: dsharma@ndf.vsnl.net.in)

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International Simultaneous Policy Organisation (ISPO)
http://www.simpol.org
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