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  UNEP News Centre, 22 Feb 05
Rebuild Differently After the Tsunami, UNEP Advises
 full story | After the Tsunami: Rapid Environmental Assessment

Excerpts

New Report Makes Recommendations on How to Reduce Vulnerability to Future Coastal Hazards

Nairobi, 22 February 2005 – The destruction caused by the Asian tsunami to the environment offers an opportunity to rebuild in a manner that preserves natural resources for the benefit of the local communities who were hardest hit by the disaster, a new report by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) says.

Vulnerability mapping is urgently needed to pin point coastal sites where homes, hotels, factories and other infrastructure should be banned or restricted.

“The report indicates that the environment was both a victim of the tsunami but also that it often played its part in reducing the impact. Where healthy and relatively intact features like coral reefs, mangroves and coastal vegetation were in place there is evidence that the damage was reduced. There are innumerable reasons to maintain healthy habitats like coral reefs. They are nurseries fish and magnets for tourists. Now we have another reason to conserve them”, said Mr. Toepfer.

“The report also makes it clear that handling the rubble and other wastes generated by the damage is a key issue for many of the countries concerned. It goes together with building the capacity of their environment ministries,” he added.

The Executive Director also emphasized that the report also supported the need for a regional early warning system, not just for tsunamis but for a wide range of weather-related natural disasters.

Findings: Wastes

A key issue affecting many of the countries concerned is how to deal with the huge quantities of waste generated from collapsed buildings and damage to rubbish tips and dump sites. In Phi Phi Islands alone, the total quantity of debris is estimated at up to 35,000 tonnes of which some 13,000 tonnes have so far been collected.

Somalia’s coastline has been used as a dumping ground for other countries nuclear and hazardous wastes for many years as a result of the long civil war and thus the inability of the authorities to police shipments or handle the wastes. “The impact of the tsunami stirred up hazardous waste deposits on beaches around North Hobyo and Warsheik, south of Benadir. Contamination from the waste deposits has thus caused health and environmental problems to the surrounding local fishing communities,” says the report.

Many people in Somalia’s impacted areas are complaining of unusual health problems including acute respiratory infections, mouth bleeds and skin conditions.

Water Supplies, Sanitation and Soil Fertility

In many of the affected areas groundwaters, bore holes and aquifers have been contaminated by salt water and bacteria as a result of sea water infiltration and damage to toilets, septic tanks and other sanitation systems.

There is concern that the fertility of the soils will be affected in the short to medium term as a result of salt water contamination. Rice crops in the western islands of Indonesia were seen to be yellowing in the fields within three weeks of the disaster.

Corals Reefs, Mangroves, and Wildlife

The impact of the tsunami varied enormously across and within affected countries.

In Aceh region, North Sumatra Provinces and the western islands of Indonesia an estimated 30 per cent of the nearly 100,000 hectares of coral reefs were damaged. Damage resulted partly as a result of the impact and partly due to materials, ranging from vehicles and fuel tankers to silt and mud, being dragged into the ocean. Nearly a third of the 50,000 hectares of pre-tsunami coastal forests of Aceh and North Sumatra are estimated to have bee damaged too.

Damage to coral reefs in the Seychelles was generally low, with the exception of the St Anne marine park where up to 27 per cent of a reef at one sight being damaged. The Seychelles’s small but important stands of mangroves amounting to around 30 square kilometres were also impacted mainly as a result of smothering of their ‘breathing roots’ by sand and silt.

Over 12 per cent of the coral reefs along Thailand’s affected Andaman coast have been ‘significantly impacted’ with reefs in some areas so badly affected, such as those in the Mu Ko Surin National Park, that they may soon be closed to tourists.

Turtle projects in Thailand have also been hit hard. For example the breeding and conservation centre at Tap Lamu Naval Base in Phang Nga Province is in ruins and around 2,000 turtles have been lost. There is also concern that large amounts of fishing gear may have been washed away and are now killing and harming marine life.

Research from Yemen indicates that in the Al Mahra Governorate alone, 500 fishing nets, 1,500 octopus traps and 8,000 lobster traps were lost to sea. “However the largest possible source of ghost nets are likely to come from losses in Sri Lanka and Indonesia where tens of thousands of nets may have been swept out to sea,” says the report.

Beach erosion and Coastal Vegetation

The tsunami affected 650 kilometres of the Somali coast which suggestions that the impact was higher because of the huge clearance of coastal mangroves for firewood, building materials and charcoal markets in the Middle East. Sri Lanka offers some of the best proof that intact coastal ecosystems, such as coral reefs and healthy sand dunes, help buffer aggressive waves. Most of Yala and Bundala National Parks were spared because, “vegetated coastal sand dunes completely stopped the tsunami, which was only able to enter where the dune line was broken by river outlets,” says the report. Some of the severest damage to Sri Lanka’s coast was where mining and damage of coral reefs had been heavy in the past.

Recommendations

A string of recommendations are made including building the skills, knowledge and equipment base of the affected governments and local authorities. More detailed studies, including long term monitoring, of the countries concerned and the main impacts sites, are needed.

For most if not all the countries, the immediate priorities appear to be the condition and rehabilitation of groundwater supplies, waste management including safe disposal of rubble, construction materials and hazardous wastes and restoring livelihoods in the agricultural and fisheries sector.

Apart from the consideration of ‘no build’ or restricted build zones in the coastal zones, government and local communities should also consider restoring mangrove forests and traditional forms of fish and shrimp farming.

Simply re-instating intensive fish and shrimp aquaculture systems of the kind that have become economically popular in recent years may be a mistake, says the report.

Meanwhile, the recovery and rebuilding process offers a ‘clear opportunity’ for sustainable energy generation based on wind, solar and tidal, it adds.

Community-based, emergency shelters possibly like those in Bangladesh should be considered. The towers can be made “multi-purpose, such as for village meeting halls, but their primary purpose is to provide a safe haven within, say, a 100 metre radius. This is especially important in those villages where there is no high ground for quite some distance and on low-lying islands, says the report. The design of the towers should also be given serious consideration. The tsunami that occurred on 26 December 2004 leveled large numbers of traditionally built wooden homes. Many other structures were swept away as the wave hit with the force of 1,000 tonnes.

Replanting coastal forests is another proposal. Forests not only take the sting out of aggressive waves and offer other benefits including incomes for local people. Trees are also ideal places where people can climb to avoid being washed away. “Bangladesh has also planted thousands of trees along the coastal strips as many people have been saved in previous disasters by clinging to the tops of coconut trees,” adds the report.

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