|
|
|
Koh Rock off Thailand, pre-tsunami
|
Environmental Impact of the Tsunami
Wave's Environmental Toll
Salt Water, Oil Poison a Lake
And Threaten Rice Harvest;
Rainforests Are Safe -- For Now
By ERIC BELLMAN in Lake Hikkaduwa, Sri Lanka, and TIMOTHY MAPES in Banda Aceh, Indonesia
Staff Reporters of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
January 17, 2005
Asia's killer tsunami was just a slow-moving, one-foot wave by the time it reached Tyrone Weerasooriya's lakeside hotel on the southwest coast of Sri Lanka. But he is still struggling to understand the effects.
The hundreds of heron, cormorant and Siberian ducks that usually crowd Lake Hikkaduwa are gone, as are the four-foot-long monitor lizards that used to swim around Mr. Weerasooriya's nature resort. Fruit trees near the lake are dying. Rice has stopped growing in fields close to shore. Even the weather seems different: Clear blue skies, the norm this time of year, have turned into muggy days with fierce evening thunderstorms.
"It all changed the day of the tsunami," says Mr. Weerasooriya, who built the eight-room Nature Resort Hotel four years ago to introduce people to the lake's rich ecosystem. "Something is wrong."
Environmental experts aren't surprised. It is too early to say whether the effects are temporary or permanent, localized or widespread, but after coastal dwellers across South and Southeast Asia finally come to grips with the loss of loved ones and property, some also will have to deal with lasting environmental damage.
"It wasn't just a wave. It was a wave of debris, cars, et cetera, and wherever the water slowed down or was trapped it deposited that sediment," says Daniel Renault, a senior officer for the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, who is based in Rome. "That will completely change [some] agricultural ecosystems."
Governments in affected countries are already trying to figure out precisely how the salt water, debris and destruction have altered their coastal ecosystems. India's Ministry of Environment and Forests is investigating how the tsunami changed the subcontinent's coast line and how much it has polluted the groundwater. Thailand and Indonesia are setting up environmental crisis centers.
The U.N. Environment Program, based in Geneva, is helping coordinate efforts across the region. It has pledged $1 million to kick off international environmental investigations and created a task force to study satellite photos and collect water and soil samples.
Damage surveys have just begun, but early reports suggest that some 40,000 hectares of rice land in Indonesia's Aceh province and 800 hectares of farm land in Thailand were damaged, says the FAO's Mr. Renault. (A hectare is 2.47 acres.) He says the damage in Sri Lanka seems to be concentrated around rivers and lagoons, like Lake Hikkaduwa, where salt water and pollution have been trapped.
Many parts of Asia are regularly hit by floods from monsoon rains or cyclones, but this disaster is different. Ecological experts say there are no records of environmental effects of previous tsunamis of this size. "We are trying to get information from people all over the world" to gauge the potential effects of the tsunami, says Mr. Renault. "We are facing something that has not been previously monitored."
In some areas, tons of salt water that rushed inland as far as three kilometers, or 1.86 miles, could permanently pollute the soil and the groundwater, poisoning plants and animals, experts say. Debris from thousands of wrecked buildings, as well as gasoline and oil from hundreds of cars, trucks and boats overturned by the waves, may also be contaminants. The giant waves moved mountains of sand, soil, rocks and coral, radically changing offshore habitats along the Indian Ocean's eastern rim.
"The waste and different kinds of debris are an issue, salinity is a matter [that affects] water resources, and industrial sites and waste depots need to be looked at" to insure there haven't been dangerous leaks, says Pasi Rinne, chairman of the UNEP task force.
Sri Lankans living on Lake Hikkaduwa's shores are trying to cope with the ecological breakdown and the impact on their livelihoods. K.G. Chandrikapadmini's village was barely touched by the tsunami. But the next morning, she was awakened by thumping noises on the roof of her simple home. The 30-year-old breadfruit trees in front of her house were dropping their spiny, green fruit -- which her family depends on for their income -- three months too early. "This has never happened before," she says pointing to hundreds of fallen fruit around her property.
Plantain, papaya and mango trees also are dying along the affected coast, unable to tolerate the salt water that flowed into lakes and rivers. G.K. Janaka, who farms a yellowing rice field near the lake, says he doesn't expect his land to yield a decent harvest for years. "Maybe we can find a seed that can survive in salty soil," he says hopefully.
Even mangrove forests, which should have no trouble with a little extra salt water, are struggling. The leaves of the mangroves that surround Mr. Weerasooriya's hotel are turning yellow and falling off. He thinks they have been affected by the film of gasoline and oil that still floats in the water more than two weeks after the disaster. "If they die, this will be a desert," says Mr. Weerasooriya, who has planted more than 400 mangrove trees around the lake. "The tourists come to see them, the birds nest in them, and the shrimp and crabs lay their eggs in them."
On the island of Sumatra, lush rainforests, home to endangered species including orangutans, wild elephants and the rare Sumatran tiger, as well as to coveted tropical hardwoods, suffered little damage in the tsunami. But the forests may not emerge unscathed when Indonesia begins rebuilding devastated Aceh province at the island's northern tip.
Two decades of heavy international demand for timber have kept the rainforests under pressure. Two of the largest pulp and paper plants in the world are on Sumatra, and hundreds of smaller sawmills, often operating without formal government approval, line the island's roads.
When the rebuilding effort is under way, the government and aid agencies will need to build at least 300,000 new homes for those displaced by the tsunami, according to WWF Indonesia, a local affiliate of the global environmental group. That will mean massive demand for wood.
"There's quite a strong likelihood that any tree left standing is going to get grabbed," says Moray McLeish, who manages a project in Indonesia run by the Nature Conservancy, which aims to curb illegal logging. He says 70% to 85% of all the timber cut down in Indonesia is harvested by people operating without government permits. "The danger is that people will go after the timber in the national parks," Mr. McLeish says. "Those are pretty much the only sources left in Sumatra."
The primarily focus of environmental concern in Indonesia is the Leuser ecological system, which covers about 2.6 million hectares, or some 40% of Aceh. Last year, illegal logging on the southern end of the area was blamed for severe flooding in North Sumatra province, which killed nearly 200 people, including five foreign tourists visiting an orangutan conservation center.
Koes Saparjadi, Indonesia's Director General for Forest Protection and Nature Conservation, says the government is aware the Gunung Leuser National Park could come under threat in coming months as logging operators scramble to cut all the timber they can find.
In a telephone interview, he said Jakarta will try to pre-empt such incursions by supplying timber that it has confiscated from illegal loggers in the past, as well as by stepping up patrols in the forest by park police.
Sand and debris, not the giant waves, scraped fragile young coral off reefs on Sri Lanka's coast. Near Hikkaduwa, reefs that usually attract hundreds of tourists this time of year are covered with sand, silt, sunken fishing boats and debris. Much, if not all, of the coral can come back, experts say. But as people rebuild the island's infrastructure, demand for lime -- which in Sri Lanka is made by burning coral in kilns -- will surge.
Thailand's reefs also suffered, especially around the tourist islet of Phi Phi, near Phuket, a site popular with divers. As much as 50% of the coral on two key reefs there has been degraded, according to the U.N. Development Programme, in Bangkok. Divers report finding deck chairs, suitcases, smashed television sets and other items that were swept out of hotels and onto the coral. A kitchen sink was found resting on a reef.
Environmentalists are pressing local officials to make some areas off-limits to divers for three years or more. "We have to come very quickly, or we might lose what we have saved," says Suwit Khunkitti, Thailand's Minister for Natural Resources and Environment.
Optimists say nature is resilient enough to bounce back quickly, and a few heavy rains may be enough to wash the salt and pollution out of the soil and water. Still, the hardest hit areas could take years to recover. "The natural systems will take some time to regenerate," says Manel Jayamanna, director general of Sri Lanka's Central Environmental Authority in Colombo. "All we can do is remove debris and not put further debris in the environment."
While he waits for nature to bounce back, Mr. Weerasooriya has developed his own theories about what is happening to his lake.
He figures birds have moved further inland because gasoline in the water has killed the bugs they like to eat. He even thinks he knows where the scavenger monitor lizards went.
"They went to the other side with the bodies," he says, pointing toward the ocean.
--Patrick Barta in Bangkok and Rin Hindryati in Jakarta contributed to this article.
�THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
CONTENT COPYRIGHT THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
. THIS CONTENT IS INTENDED SOLELY FOR EDUCATIONAL PURPOSES.
mongabay.com users agree to the following as a condition for use of this material:
This site contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been authorized by the copyright owner. Such material is made available in an effort to advance understanding of environmental issues. This constitutes 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use', you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.
If you are the copyright owner and would like this content removed from mongabay.com, please contact me.
|
