Experts have said for years that Kathmandu is an extremely high-risk city in the event of seismic activity, yet Nepal was caught off guard when a massive earthquake struck on Apr. 25, 2015. Credit: Amantha Perera/IPS

By Amantha Perera
COLOMBO, May 8 2015 (IPS)

There has never been any doubt that Nepal is sitting on one of the most seismically active areas in South Asia. The fact that, when the big one struck, damages and deaths would be catastrophic has been known for years.

Indeed, when this correspondent visited Nepal several years ago, and found himself climbing up the narrow, winding stairwell of the Nepal Red Cross Society office in Kathmandu, a poster on one of the doors demanded a close read: “Kathmandu Valley is most vulnerable during an earthquake,” the sign said.

"[This] is one of the poorest countries in the world and resources were woefully lacking." -- Orla Fagan, regional media officer at the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), Bangkok
“One study has shown than in case of an earthquake, 40,000 people may die, 95,000 persons may be seriously injured and 60 percent of houses will be totally destroyed.”

Looking out of the window at the densely populated hillsides, dotted with three-storey concrete structures hugging each other in the jam-packed metropolis, it was clear the warnings were not hyperbolic.

Little over a month before the massive earthquake struck on Apr. 25, Mahendra Bahadur Pandey, Nepal’s minister for foreign affairs, warned the world yet again of what was to come.

“It is […] estimated that the human losses in the Kathmandu Valley alone, should there be a major seismic event, will be catastrophic,” he told the United Nations World Conference on Disaster Risk Reduction in Sendai, Japan, in March.

Horrifyingly, his words were prophetic of the tragedy that unfolded not long after.

Caught off guard

Less than two weeks after the 7.8-magnitude quake rippled through Nepal, close to 8,000 people have been pronounced dead, while hundreds are still missing. Families wait for news, while officials wait for their worst fears to be confirmed: that the death toll will likely climb higher in the coming days.

Over 17,500 people are injured, and ten hospitals have been completely destroyed, according to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).

An estimated eight million people, largely in the country’s Western and Central Regions, have been affected by the disaster – representing over a quarter of Nepal’s population of over 27 million people.

The largest cities, such as Kathmandu and Pokhara, have been badly hit; within 72 hours of the quake, over half a million fled Kathmandu to outlying areas.

Despite ample evidence of the damage a disaster of this scale could wreak on the country, Nepal was in many ways caught unawares, and is now struggling to meet the challenges of providing for a beleaguered and petrified population, who weathered numerous aftershocks in the week following the major quake.

Scores of families are still living in tents, while the World Health Organisation (WHO) has issued an urgent funding appeal for the estimated 3.5 million people in need of emergency food aid.

With so many hospitals destroyed, doctors have resorted to treating patients in the street. The U.N. health agency has allocated 1.1 million dollars for medical staff and supplies and has so far treated 50,000 patients in the 14 most severely affected districts.

‘Resources woefully lacking’

But there is a limit to what aid agencies and donor countries can do, and eventually the government will have to shoulder the lion’s share of the recovery effort: something experts feel Nepal is unprepared for.

“It is a massive relief operation, probably the largest in this region that we have launched,” Orla Fagan, regional media officer at OCHA’s office in Bangkok, Thailand, told IPS.

The long-term reconstruction bill could be as high as five billion dollars, while U.N. agencies said last week that they need at least 415 million dollars for more immediate efforts over the next three months.

Fagan said that because the threat levels were known, some degree of coordination and disaster preparedness work was being carried out in the Himalayan country prior to the disaster, mostly relating to training and building awareness.

“There was coordination between the government and U.N. agencies, but it was on a very small scale,” she said, adding, “You need to understand that this is one of the poorest countries in the world and resources were woefully lacking.”

Nepal is considered a Least Developed Country (LDC) and currently ranks 145 out of 187 on the United Nations Human Development Index (HDI). It is also saddled with massive debt – over 3.8 billion dollars owed to donors like the World Bank, International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the Asian Development Bank (ADB) – and funneled over 217 million dollars into debt repayments last year, money that might have been better spent shoring up its disaster preparation and management systems.

Fagan explained that the main gaps in disaster preparedness levels were in information management, with the government failing to collect data gathered by various actors into a cohesive national data bank. The country was also lacking a tried and tested national blueprint on early response and coordination of relief efforts.

A little known fact is that despite the very real threats of earthquakes, heavy rains, landslides and glacial lake outbursts, Nepal’s disaster response policies are governed by the over three-decades-old 1982 Natural Calamities Relief Act.

Though a 2008 draft act envisaged a National Disaster Management Authority, it is yet to be ratified by parliament.

“The hope now is that with all the international resources and goodwill pouring in, Nepal can build a stronger national disaster preparedness policy and mechanism,” Fagan said.

Learning lessons from the region

Regional disaster experts agree with that assessment.

“First the funds need to be used for recovery interventions,” explained N.M.S.I. Arambepola, director of the Asian Disaster Preparedness Center in Bangkok. “But a part of the funds should be used to develop a road map for a disaster resilient Nepal.

“The document would also identify the roles and responsibilities [of various government agencies] in implementation, ensuring that the government initiates a long-term plan for disaster risk reduction with the support of the development community,” the expert told IPS.

Such a document would specify which branches would issue warnings, which would disseminate them and which would be in charge of evacuations, for instance.

Arambepola also believes Nepal could learn a thing or two from its neighbors, no strangers to natural disasters.

“Nepal should take the example of other South Asian countries such as India, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka to develop policy [and] legal frameworks and an institutional set-up for disaster risk reduction,” he stressed.

Sri Lanka in particular presents an excellent case study, since it was just ten years ago that the country was caught in a similar crisis, completely at a loss to deal with the devastating impact of the 2004 Asian tsunami.

Whereas Nepal at least has been aware of the earthquake threat in its densely populated cities for many years, Sri Lanka had no idea that its coast – home to 50 percent of the country’s 20 million people – was in such grave danger.

It found out the hard way on Dec. 24 when the killer waves knocked the stuffing out of three percent of its population, leaving 35,000 dead, over a million destitute, and a reconstruction bill of three billion dollars.

The country’s former secretary to the ministry of disaster management, S M Mohamed, described the tsunami as an “eye-opener”, sparking efforts at both government and civil society levels to ensure that the country would never again be caught off guard.

While the road to stronger management and preparedness has by no means been a smooth one, Sri Lanka has nevertheless made great strides since that fateful day, including setting up the country’s first-ever Disaster Management Centre (DMC).

In the last decade the DMC has evolved into the main national hub for disaster preparedness levels as well as becoming the nodal public agency for relief coordination and early warnings in the event of a natural calamity.

It has district offices in all 25 districts with personnel ready at any time for immediate deployment. In April 2012, the DMC was instrumental in efficiently evacuating over a million people from the coast, due to a tsunami threat.

“The Sri Lankan operation grew from scratch, and now it’s at a somewhat effective level, [though] there are still gaps. Disaster resilience is more about lessons learnt by trial and error,” DMC Additional Director Sarath Lal Kumara told IPS.

Although Nepal’s challenges are unique compared to some of the worst disasters in the region’s history – with 600,000 flattened houses after the quake, compared to Sri Lanka’s 100,000 following the tsunami, for instance – it still stands to take away valuable lessons, that will hopefully prevent unnecessary damages and loss of life in the case of future catastrophes.

Edited by Kanya D’Almeida

A dhoni in the Maldives. Credit: Nevit Dilmen/cc by 3.0

By Ahmed Sareer
NEW YORK, Jan 10 2015 (IPS)

Since 1971, Maldives is one of only three countries that have graduated from the ranks of the world’s “least developed countries” (LDCs) – the other two being Botswana and Cape Verde.

The Maldives graduated on Jan. 1, 2011. The review of LDCs conducted in 1997 concluded that the Maldives was ready for immediate graduation.

Ambassador Sareer. UN Photo/Eskinder Debebe

The Maldives government argued that the U.N. criteria for graduation should include a “smooth transition period” in order to bring into place adequate adjustments necessary for full transition into middle-income country status.

The U.N. Resolution adopted on Dec. 20, 2004 endorsed and adopted these arguments. Under that resolution, the Maldives was set to graduate from the list of LDCs on Jan. 1, 2008.

Just six days after adoption of the resolution, the Indian Ocean tsunami struck the Maldives.

The Maldives economy, which had grown at an average of eight percent per annum for two consecutive years, was devastated by the tsunami: 62 percent of the GDP was destroyed; over seven percent of the population was internally displaced; social and economic infrastructure damaged or destroyed in over one quarter of the inhabited islands; 12 inhabited islands were turned into complete rubble.

Following the disaster, and on the request of the Maldives, the General Assembly decided to defer the graduation until 2011, with a smooth transition period until 2014.Donors often assess a country’s need by its developmental status at the U.N., which traps countries such as the Maldives in a vicious cycle being now termed as the “Middle Income Paradox”.

Graduation from LDC does not help a country to overcome the development challenges it faces. Graduation does not make a country less vulnerable to the consequences of its geography.

It is no secret that small island states being assessed for graduation, do not meet the threshold for economic vulnerability.

Small island states often achieve their high development status because of high and consistent investment in human resources, and the social sector as well as government administration.

This leaves limited financial resources for the country to prepare for natural disasters or to carry out mitigation and adaptation measures.

Countries often have to rely on multilateral and bilateral donors for assistance for environmental projects: donors that often assess a country’s need by its developmental status at the U.N., which traps countries such as the Maldives in a vicious cycle being now termed as the “Middle Income Paradox”.

However, all this is conveniently ignored or overlooked.

Graduation from LDC status need not be feared, nor does it need to be an obstacle in a country’s development path. We only fear what we don’t know.

The Maldives’ experience showed that due to the infancy of the graduation programme, the relatively low number of countries that have graduated, and the lack of coordinated commitment from bilateral partners, the graduation process has been far from smooth.

The General Assembly Resolution, which the Maldives helped to coordinate, adopted in December 2012 provided a smooth transition for countries graduated from the LDC list.

The resolution has put into place greater oversight ability for the U.N. and articulated the need for a strengthened consultative mechanism for the coordination of bilateral aid.

The Maldives has tried to make the path for subsequent graduates smoother. Yet, it is a fact that the graduation process still relies on flawed criteria.

While no country wants to be termed the “Least” on any group, it cannot be denied that inherent vulnerabilities and geo-physical realities of some of the countries that often extend beyond their national jurisdiction, need help that are specific and targeted, in order to improve the resilience of those countries.

It is for that reason that the Maldives lobbied extensively with the World Trade Organisation (WTO) to extend the application of TRIPS for all LDCs.

Following graduation, the Maldives also applied to join the EU’s Generalised System of Preferences but new regulations prevented Maldives from the scheme. This posed a significant loss to our fishing industry, which is the export sector in the economy.

The Maldives has been continually exploring the viability of a “small and vulnerable economy” category at the U.N., similar to that which exists in the World Trade Organisation.

Such a category will acknowledge the particular needs of countries arising from the smallness of their economies and inherent geographical realities.

Small island states have continually argued that special consideration needs to be given to SIDS that are slated for graduation. Yet, these voices of concern have fallen largely on deaf years.

But the needs of our people, the development we desire cannot wait to be recognised.

That is why the Maldives decided to take our development path into our own hands. This can be done by consistently employing good policies.

Development is the result of a combination of bold decisions and an ability to seize the opportunities. SIDS have shown to the world that we are not short of smart ideas. Rather than relying on others, we have to develop our own economies our way!

Edited by Kitty Stapp

Excerpt:

Using bio-fertilizers, farmers in Tamil Nadu are reviving agricultural lands that were choked by salt deposits in the aftermath of the 2004 Asian tsunami. Credit: Jency Samuel/IPS

By Jency Samuel
NAGAPATNAM, India, Jan 7 2015 (IPS)

Standing amidst his lush green paddy fields in Nagapatnam, a coastal district in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu, a farmer named Ramajayam remembers how a single wave changed his entire life.

The simple farmer was one of thousands whose agricultural lands were destroyed by the 2004 Asian tsunami, as massive volumes of saltwater and metre-high piles of sea slush inundated these fertile fields in the aftermath of the disaster.

“The general perception is that organic farming takes years to yield good results and revenue. But during post-tsunami rehabilitation work [...] we proved that in less than a year organic methods could yield better results than chemical farming." -- M Revathi, the founder-trustee of the Tamil Nadu Organic Farmers' Movement (TOFarM)
On the morning of Dec. 26, 2004, Ramajayam had gone to his farm in Karaikulam village to plant casuarina saplings. As he walked in, he noticed his footprints were deeper than usual and water immediately filled between the tracks, a phenomenon he had never witnessed before.

A few minutes later, like a black mass, huge walls of water came towards him. He ran for his life. His farms were a pathetic sight the next day.

The Nagapatnam district recorded 6,065 deaths, more than 85 percent of the state’s death toll. Farmers bore the brunt, struggling to revive their fields, which were inundated for a distance of up to two miles in some locations. Nearly 24,000 acres of farmland were destroyed by the waves.

Worse still was that the salty water did not recede, ruining the paddy crop that was expected to be harvested 15 days after the disaster. Small ponds that the farmers had dug on their lands with government help became incredibly saline, and as the water evaporated it had a “pickling effect” on the soil, farmers say, essentially killing off all organic matter crucial to future harvests.

Plots belonging to small farmers like Ramajayam, measuring five acres or less, soon resembled saltpans, with dead soil caked in mud stretching for miles. Even those trees that withstood the tsunami could not survive the intense period of salt inundation, recalled Kumar, another small farmer.

“We were used to natural disasters; but nothing like the tsunami,” Ramajayam added.

Cognizant of the impact of the disaster on poor rural communities, government offices and aid agencies focused much of their rehabilitation efforts on coastal dwellers, offering alternative livelihood schemes in a bid to lessen the economic burden of the catastrophe.

The nearly 10,000 affected small and marginal farmers, who have worked these lands for generations, were reluctant to accept a change in occupation. Ignoring the reports of technical inspection teams that rehabilitating the soil could take up to 10 years, some sowed seed barely a year after the tsunami.

Not a single seed sprouted, and many began to lose hope.

It was then that various NGOs stepped in, and began a period of organic soil renewal and regeneration that now serves as a model for countless other areas in an era of rampant climate change.

The ‘soil doctor’

One of the first organisations to begin sustained efforts was the Tamil Nadu Organic Farmers’ Movement (TOFarM), which adopted the village of South Poigainallur as the site of experimental work.

The first step was measuring the extent of the damage, including assessing the depth of salt penetration and availability of organic content. When it became clear that the land was completely uncultivable, the organisation set to work designing unique solutions for every farm that involved selecting seeds and equipment based on the soil condition and topography.

Sea mud deposits were removed, bunds were raised and the fields were ploughed. Deep trenches were made in the fields and filled with the trees that had been uprooted by the tsunami. As the trees decomposed the soil received aeration.

Dhaincha seeds, a legume known by its scientific name Sesbania bispinosa, were then sown in the fields.

“It [dhaincha] is called the ‘soil doctor’ because it is a green manure crop that grows well in saline soil,” M Revathi, the founder-trustee of TOFarM, told IPS.

When the nutrient-rich dhaincha plants flowered in about 45 days, they were ploughed back into the ground, to loosen up the soil and help open up its pores. Compost and farmyard manure were added in stages before the sowing season.

Today, the process stands as testament to the power of organic solutions.

Organic practices save the day

Poor farmers across Tamil Nadu are heavily dependent on government aid. Each month the state government’s Public Distribution System hands out three tonnes of rice to over 20 million people.

To facilitate this, the government runs paddy procurement centres, wherein officials purchase farmers’ harvests for a fixed price. While this assures farmers of a steady income, the fixed price is far below the market rate.

Thus marginal farmers, who number some 13,000, barely make enough to cover their monthly needs. After the 90-135 day paddy harvest period, farmers fall back on vegetable crops to ensure their livelihood. But in districts like Nagapatnam, where fresh water sources lie 25 feet below ground level, farmers who rely on rain-fed agriculture are at a huge disadvantage.

When the tsunami washed over the land, many feared they would never recover.

“The microbial count on a pin head, which should be 4,000 in good soil, dropped down to below 500 in this area,” Dhanapal, a farmer in Kilvelur of Nagapatnam district and head of the Cauvery Delta Farmers’ Association, informed IPS.

But help was not far away.

A farmer named S Mahalingam’s eight-acre plot of land close to a backwater canal in North Poigainallur was severely affected by the tsunami. His standing crop of paddy was completely destroyed.

NGOs backed by corporate entities and aid agencies pumped out seawater from Mahalingam’s fields and farm ponds. They distributed free seeds and saplings. The state government waived off farm loans. Besides farmyard manure, Mahalingam used the leaves of neem, nochi and Indian beech (Azadirachta indica, Vitex negundo and Pongamia glabra respectively) as green manure.

Subsequent rains also helped remove some of the salinity. The farmer then sowed salt-resistant traditional rice varieties called Kuruvikar and Kattukothalai. In two years his farms were revived, enabling him to continue growing rice and vegetables.

NGO’s like the Trichy-based Kudumbam have innovated other methods, such as the use of gypsum, to rehabilitate burnt-out lands.

A farmer named Pl. Manikkavasagam, for instance, has benefitted from the NGO’s efforts to revive his five-acre plot of farmland, which failed to yield any crops after the tsunami.

Remembering an age-old practice, he dug trenches and filled them with the green fronds of palms that grow in abundance along the coast.

Kudumbam supplied him with bio-fertlizers such as phosphobacteria, azospirillum and acetobacter, all crucial in helping breathe life into the suffocated soil.

Kudumbam distributed bio-solutions and trained farmers to produce their own. As Nagapatnam is a cattle-friendly district, bio solutions using ghee, milk, cow dung, tender coconut, fish waste, jaggery and buttermilk in varied combinations could be made easily and in a cost-effective manner. Farmers continue to use these bio-solutions, all very effective in controlling pests.

“The general perception is that organic farming takes years to yield good results and revenue,” TOFarM’s Revathi told IPS.

“But during post-tsunami rehabilitation work, with data, we proved that in less than a year organic methods could yield better results than chemical farming. That TOFarM was invited to replicate this in Indonesia and Sri Lanka is proof that farms can be revived through sustainable practices even after disasters,” she added.

As early as 2006, farmers like Ramajayam, having planted a salt-resistant strain of rice known as kuzhivedichan, yielded a harvest within three months of the sowing season.

Together with restoration of some 2,000 ponds by TOFarM, farmers in Nagapatnam are confident that sustainable agriculture will stand the test of time, and whatever climate-related challenges are coming their way. The lush fields of Tamil Nadu’s coast stand as proof of their assertion.

Edited by Kanya D’Almeida

A novice monk stares at the sea, after taking part in commemoration events to mark the 10th anniversary of the Asian tsunami in Sri Lanka’s southern town of Hikkaduwa. Credit: Amantha Perera/IPS

By Amantha Perera
KALMUNAI, Sri Lanka, Dec 31 2014 (IPS)

About six months after a massive tsunami slammed the island nation of Sri Lanka on Dec. 26, 2004, large plumes of smoke could be frequently seen snaking skywards from the beach near the village of Sainathimaruthu, just east of Kalmunai town, about 300 km from the capital, Colombo.

A petrified population had devised a makeshift early-warning system that would alert their fellow villagers of any incoming tsunami – burning rubber tires on the sand by the sea.

Residents of small coastal villagers would regularly look up from the task of removing rubble or repairing their demolished houses to check if the dark, smoky trails were still visible in the sky.

“You have to face a monstrous wave washing over your roof, taking everything in its path, to realise that you can’t drop your guard, ever." -- Iqbal Aziz, a tsunami survivor in eastern Sri Lanka
“If the smoke vanished, that meant the waves were advancing and we had to move out,” explained Iqbal Aziz, a local from the Kalmunai area in the eastern Batticaloa District.

Their fears were not unfounded. The villages of Maradamunai, Karativu and Sainathimaruthu, located 370 km east of Colombo, bore the brunt of the disaster, recording 3,000 deaths out of a total death toll of 35,322.

Humble homes, built at such close quarters that each structure caressed another, were pulverized when the waves crashed ashore the day after Christmas. What scared the villagers most was the shock of it all, with virtually no warnings issued ahead of the catastrophe by any government body.

In retrospect, there was plenty of time to relocate vulnerable communities to higher ground – it took over two hours for the killer waves to reach Kalmunai from their origin in northwest Indonesia. But the absence of official mechanisms resulted in a massive death toll.

Trauma and paranoia led to the makeshift early-warning system, but 10 years later the villagers have stopped looking to the sky for signs of another disaster. Instead, they check their cell phones for updates of extreme weather events.

The new system, fine-tuned throughout the post-tsunami decade, is certainly an improvement on its predecessor. Just last month, on Nov. 15, a huge 7.3-magnitude offshore earthquake was reported about 150 km northeast of Indonesia’s Malaku Islands. Villagers like Aziz only had to consult their mobile phones to know that they were in no danger, and could rest easy.

The pulverised beach in Kalmunai, located in eastern Sri Lanka, was stripped of most of its standing structures by the ferocity of the waves. Credit: Amantha Perera/IPS

“The tsunami was like a wake-up call,” Ivan de Silva, secretary of the ministry of irrigation and water management, told IPS.

Besides the tragic death toll, the reconstruction bill – a whopping three billion dollars – also served as a jolt to the government to lay far more solid disaster preparedness plans.

Dealing with the destruction of 100,000 homes and buildings, and coordinating the logistics of over half a million displaced citizens, provided further impetus for creating a blueprint for handling natural catastrophes.

In May 2005, Sri Lanka implemented its first Disaster Management Act, which paved the way for the establishment of the Disaster Management Council headed by the president.

Three months later, in August 2005, the Disaster Management Centre (DMC) came into being, tasked with overseeing all disaster preparedness programmes, early warnings and post-disaster work.

Now, less than a decade later, it has offices in all of the country’s 25 districts, and carries out regular emergency evacuation drills to prep the population for possible calamities.

In April 2012, the DMC evacuated over a million people along the coast following a tsunami warning, the largest exercise ever undertaken in Sri Lanka’s history.

But the national plan is far from bullet proof. As Sarath Lal Kumara, assistant director of the DMC, told IPS: “Maintaining preparedness levels is an on-going process and needs constant attention.”

In fact, glaring lapses in disaster management continue to cost lives on an island increasingly battered by extreme weather events.

The latest such incident occurred during the same week as the 10^th anniversary commemoration of the tsunami, when heavy rains lashed the northern and eastern regions of the country.

By the time the rains eased, 35 were dead, three listed as missing, a million had been marooned and over 110,000 displaced. Most of the deaths were due to landsides in the district of Badulla, capital of the southern Uva Province.

Unfortunately, two months ago, another village in the same district suffered multiple fatalities due to landslides. On Oct. 29, in the hilly village of Meeriyabedda, located on the southern slopes of Sri Lanka’s central hills, a landslide prompted by heavy rains killed 12 and 25 have been listed as missing.

A man walks past the 10-foot wall near the boundary of the Southern Extension of the Colombo harbour, which was built as a protective measure against a future tsunami. Credit: Amantha Perera/IPS

There was no clear early warning disseminated to the villagers, despite the National Building Research Organisation (NBRO) issuing warnings several days before of possible landslides. Nor was any pre-planning undertaken using NBRO hazard maps that clearly indicated landslide risks in the villages.

The twin tragedies were not the first time – and probably won’t be the last – that lives were lost due to failure to effectively communicate early warnings.

In November 2011, 29 people died in the Southern Province when gale-force winds sneaked up the coast unannounced. In July 2013, over 70 were killed in the same region, largely because fisher communities in the area were not informed about the annual southwest monsoon moving at a much faster speed than anticipated.

“We need a much more robust early warning dissemination mechanism, and better public understanding about such warnings,” DMC’s Kumara said.

The recent landslide proved that simple trainings alone are not sufficient to prompt efficient responses to natural disasters.

Meeriyabedda, for instance, has been the site of numerous training and awareness programmes, including a major initiative carried out in conjunction with the Sri Lanka Red Cross Society (SLRCS) in 2009 that involved mock drills and the distribution of rain gauges and loudspeakers to locals in the area.

Yet there was no evidence to suggest that villagers used the training or equipment prior to the landslide.

R M S Bandara, head of the NBRO’s Landslide Risk Research and Management Division, told IPS that while extensive maps of the island’s hazard-prone areas are freely available, they are not being put to good use.

“Not only the [general] public but even public officials are not aware of disaster preparedness. It still remains an issue that is outside public discussions, [except] when disasters strike,” he asserted.

Currently, only those who have faced disasters head-on understand and appreciate the need to think and act at lightening-quick speeds. “You have to face a monstrous wave washing over your roof, taking everything in its path, to realise that you can’t drop your guard, ever,” Aziz said.

Edited by Kanya D’Almeida

A woman wails near the location of a mass grave in the village of Peraliya in southern Sri Lanka. Thousands continue to struggle with trauma and depression, ten years after the disaster. Credit: Amantha Perera/IPS

By Amantha Perera
COLOMBO, Dec 26 2014 (IPS)

It took just 30 minutes for the killer waves to leave 350,000 dead and half a million displaced. Less than one hour for 100,000 houses to be destroyed and 200,000 people to be stripped of their livelihoods.

For many thousands of people in South Asia, the Christmas holidays will always double as a memorial for those who suffered tragic losses during the 2004 tsunami, which rushed ashore on Dec. 26 leaving a trail of tears in its wake.

The island nation of Sri Lanka was one of the worst hit, with three percent of its population affected and five percent of its gross domestic product (GDP) lost in damages.

A ship tilts precariously at the mouth of the Colombo harbour as tsunami waves hit the southwestern coast of Sri Lanka on Dec. 26, 2004. Credit: Amantha Perera/IPS

The first waves reached the interior of Sri Lanka along the Hamilton Canal located just south of the capital, Colombo, in the early hours of the morning. Credit: Amantha Perera/IPS

A Buddhist monk stands with a military officer in front of a train that was washed away by the waves in the southern village of Peraliya, killing over 1,000 people. Credit: Amantha Perera/IPS

A woman wails near the location of a mass grave in the village of Peraliya in southern Sri Lanka. Thousands continue to struggle with trauma and depression, ten years after the disaster. Credit: Amantha Perera/IPS

Residents of this emergency relocation centre in the Panichchankerni village of the eastern Batticaloa District also bore the brunt of Sri Lanka’s civil war, which finally ended in May 2009. Credit: Amantha Perera/IPS

According to the Disaster Management Centre (DMC), over a million people, mainly poor families from the coastal areas, had to be evacuated.

The Northern and Eastern provinces – already struggling in the grip of the protracted civil conflict that at the time was showing no signs of abating – bore the lion’s share of the destruction.

Weary from years of war, the population caught up in the fighting between government forces and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) were battered further by the waves: according to government data, 60 percent of the tsunami’s impact was concentrated on the northern and eastern coasts.

A man covers his nose and mouth with a handkerchief to shield himself from the smell emanating from the train, as dead bodies decompose in the sun. Credit: Amantha Perera/IPS

A woman carries a tin sheet in Kalmunai, a city in the Ampara District in Sri Lanka’s Eastern Province. Some 3,500 people living in three villagers on the eastern coast lost their lives – comprising a tenth of the national death toll. They were mostly poor fishermen living in humble homes next to the sea. Credit: Amantha Perera/IPS

The village of Sainathimaruthu in eastern Sri Lanka was completely destroyed by the tsunami. Fisher families living along the coast faced another hurdle when the then Sri Lankan government initiated an ill-advised move to erect a 100-metre no-build buffer zone along the coast. The plan was later scrapped. Credit: Amantha Perera/IPS

A photographer captures the burnt remains of a tsunami victim on the beach in the village of Pannichhankerni in the eastern Batticaloa District. Located within areas that were then controlled by the separatist Tamil Tigers, victims here found relief supplies slow to arrive, and then fell prey to squabbling between the Tigers and the government over aid distribution. Credit: Amantha Perera/IPS

Men walk past destroyed buildings in the Hambantota town in southern Sri Lanka. Reconstruction in this town subsequently moved at a rapid pace. Credit: Amantha Perera/IPS

Ten years later, there are no large national monuments erected in memory of those who suffered in the aftermath of the disaster. There is not even a national archive of those who lost their lives. Small memorials dot the coast, but most are in serious need of a good paint job.

In the decade since the tsunami, Sri Lanka has undergone massive change. The nearly 30-year-old war is over; the displaced have returned to new or repaired homes; and for the majority of the island, the crashing waves have been relegated to the realm of a bad, fading nightmare.

But for the tens of thousands who lived through the catastrophe in 2004, the terror of that day will never be forgotten. And while development picks up around the island, with shining new roads leading the way to luxury tourist destinations, many are yet to come to terms with the loss, trauma and poverty that the tsunami brought into their lives.

A small child stands amidst the destruction in the town of Hambantota, located in southern Sri Lanka. Credit: Amantha Perera/IPS

Five years after the tsunami, several hundred people were still living in temporary shelters meant to last for just one year in the eastern city of Kalmunai, where a lack of access to land proved a major hurdle to rehabilitation of victims. Credit: Amantha Perera/IPS

A man rides his bike by houses destroyed by the tsunami in the Karathivu area in Kalmunai. Credit: Amantha Perera/IPS

These half-built houses, part of a rehabilitation village in Kalmunai, were built using private funds. Credit: Amantha Perera/IPS

Residents from the coastal areas of Ratmalana, a Colombo suburb, wait by the roadside after being evacuated from their homes following a tsunami warning on April 11, 2012. Poor families, living in coastal areas, are most vulnerable to natural disasters. Credit: Indika Sriyan/IPS

Edited by Kanya D’Almeida

Two fisherwomen walk along the seashore in Nemmeli. The village that saw widespread destruction in the 2004 tsunami and several cyclones since now has a unique community college where locals can learn disaster management. Half the students are women. Credit: Stella Paul/IPS

By Stella Paul
NEMMELI, India, Dec 20 2014 (IPS)

Ten years have now passed, but Raghu Raja, a 27-year-old fisherman from the coastal village of Nemmeli in southern India’s Kanchipuram district, still clearly remembers the day he escaped the tsunami.

It was a sleepy Sunday morning when Raja, then a student, saw a wall of seawater moving forward, in seeming slow motion. Terrified, he broke into a run towards the two-storey cyclone shelter that stood at the rear of his village, along an interstate highway.“This is what being a climate refugee is like.” -- Founder of the "Cyclone College", Ramaswamy Krishnamurthy

Once there, the teenager watched in utter bewilderment as the wall of water hammered his village flat.

“I didn’t know what was happening, why the sea was acting like that,” Raja recalls.

Later, he heard that the seabed had been shaken by an earthquake, triggering a tsunami. It was a new word for Nemmeli, a village of 4,360 people. The tsunami destroyed all the houses that stood by the shore, 141 in Raja’s neighbourhood alone.

A decade later, the cyclone shelter that once saved the lives of Raghu Raja and his fellow villagers is a college that teaches them, among other things,  about natural disasters like tsunamis and how best to survive them.

The state-funded college was established in 2011. One of its primary goals was to build disaster resilience among communities in the vulnerable coastal villages. Affiliated with the University of Madras, the college offers undergraduate degrees in commerce and sciences, including disaster management and disaster risk reduction.

Today a married father of two, Raja, whose education ended after 10^th grade, dreams that one day his children will attend this college.

Understanding the dangers that surround them

While Raghu Raja’s dream will take some time to come true, his fellow fisherman Varadaraj Madhavan is already there: two of his three children have attended the “cyclone college”.

His 22-year-old daughter Vijaya Lakshmi has already graduated from the college – the first graduate in Madhavan’s entire clan – and 18-year-old son Dilli Ganesh is expected to follow suit next year.

During her three years of college, Laxmi studied English, Computer Applications and Disaster Management. Among her greatest achievements as a student has been creating a “Hazard Map” of her village. The map, prepared after an extensive study of the village, its shoreline and soil structure, shows the level of vulnerability the village faces.

“This is a real time status,” says Ignatius Prabhakar of SEEDS India, an NGO that trains vulnerable communities in disaster preparedness. “There are different colours indicating different types of sea storms and the levels of threats they pose. The map, meant to be updated every three months, is for the villagers to understand these threats and be prepared.”

There are seven neighbourhoods in Nemmeli and a copy of the hazard map stands at the entrance of each of them. Laxmi, who worked alongside a team of engineering students from Chennai on the mapping project, describes is as a great learning experience.

“I learnt a lot of our village, the environment here. For example, I learnt how disappearance of sand dunes, overfishing and garbage disposal can increase the threats of flooding. I also learnt where everyone should go in time of a disaster and how exactly we should evacuate,” she says.

The young woman is now also a member of the Village Residents Alliance for Disaster Risk Reduction – a community group that actively promotes disaster preparedness.

From cyclone shelter to learning hub

Though highly popular now, it was an uphill task to set up the college, recalls Ramaswamy Krishnamurthy, a professor at the University of Madras and the founder of the college.

To begin with, the state government had asked the college to be operational from the year 2011. It was summer already, but there were no buildings to hold the classes in and no land allocated yet to build one. After several rounds of intense lobbying of local government officials, Krishnamurthy was offered the cyclone shelter to run the college.

The next big step was to convince the villagers to send their children to the college.

“We hired an auto-rickshaw (tuk tuk) and fixed a loudspeaker on top on it. My assistant would drive the vehicle around the neighbourhood all day, calling on the villagers to send their children to the college. I would wait right here, under a tree, waiting for a parent to turn up,” says Krishnamurthy, says who was the principal until recently and is credited for the college’s current popularity and its successful disaster risk reduction programme.

In the first year of the college, 60 students enrolled. After four years, the number has gone up to 411 and half of them are women, says Krishnamurthy.

Sukanya Manikyam, 23, who recently graduated, was one of the first students to enroll. She is now planning to join a post-graduate course. “I would like to teach at a university one day,” she says.

According to Krishnamurthy, since the tsunami, the rate of erosion along the shore has been visibly increasing. The topography of the sea bed has changed, the sand dunes are disappearing and houses are caving in, slowly rendering the villagers homeless and causing internal displacement.

“This is what being a climate refugee is like,” says Krishnamurthy.

As the danger of displacement from the advancing sea grows greater, so does this fishing community’s need for alternative livelihoods. The ‘cyclone college’ is catering to this need, providing knowledge and information that can help residents find new jobs and build new lives.

Tilak Mani, a 60-year-old villager, is optimistic about the future. “Ten years ago, the tsunami had left all of us in tears. Today, our children have the skills to steer us towards safety in such a disaster.”

Edited by Kitty Stapp

An Irula couple fishes in the creeks of the Pichavaram Mangrove Forest in Tamil Nadu. Credit: Malini Shankar/IPS

By Malini Shankar
PICHAVARAM, India, Nov 13 2014 (IPS)

When the Asian tsunami washed over several Indian Ocean Rim countries on Boxing Day 2004, it left a trail of destruction in its wake, including a death toll that touched 230,000.

Millions lost their jobs, food security and traditional livelihoods and many have spent the last decade trying to pick up the pieces of their lives. But for a small tribe in southern India, the tsunami didn’t bring devastation; instead, it brought hope.

Numbering some 25,000 people, the Irulas have long inhabited the Nilgiri Mountains in the states of Tamil Nadu and Kerala, and have traditionally earned a living by ridding the farmland of rats and snakes, often supplementing their meagre income by working as daily wage agricultural labourers in the fields.

“If we were not included in the [Scheduled Tribes] List we would never have benefited from [development] schemes. We would have remained hunter-gatherers, eating rats and hunting snakes." -- Nagamuthu, an Irula tribesman and tsunami survivors
Now, on the eve of the 10-year anniversary of the tsunami, the Irulas in Tamil Nadu are a living example of how sustainable disaster management can alleviate poverty, while simultaneously preserving an ancient way of life.

Prior to 2004, the Irula people laboured under extremely exploitative conditions, earning no more than 3,000 rupees (about 50 dollars) each month. Nutrition levels were poor, and the community suffered from inadequate housing and sanitation facilities.

But when the giant waves receded and NGOs and aid workers flocked to India’s southern coast to rebuild the flattened, sodden landscape, the Irulas received more than just a hand-out.

They were finally included on the government’s List of Scheduled Tribes, largely thanks to the efforts of a government official named G.S. Bedi from the tsunami-ravaged coastal district of Cuddalore in Tamil Nadu.

Inclusion on the list enabled the community to become legal beneficiaries of state-sponsored developmental schemes like the Forest Rights Act and other sustainable fisheries initiatives, thereby improving their access to better housing, and bringing greater food and livelihood security.

More importantly, community members say, the post-tsunami period has marked a kind of revival among Irulas, who are availing themselves of sustainable livelihood schemes to conserve their environment while also increasing their wages.

Bioshields conservation – the way forward for sustainable development

Under the aegis of the M S Swaminathan Research Foundation (MSSRF), Irulas are now part of a major livelihood scheme that has boosted monthly earnings seven-fold, to roughly 21,000 rupees or about 350 dollars in the Pichavaram Mangrove Forest of Tamil Nadu where their traditional homes are located.

Some 180 Irula families are directly benefitting from training programmes and subsidies granted to their tribal cooperatives, also known as self-help groups.

Members of the tribe are sharpening their skills at fishing, sustainable aquaculture and crab fattening, gradually moving further and further away from a life of veritable servitude to big landowners.

Perhaps most importantly, Irulas are incorporating mangrove protection and conservation into their daily lives, a step they see as necessary to the long-term survival of the entire community.

Indeed, it was the Pichavaram Mangrove Forest, located close to the town of Chidambaram in Tamil Nadu, that spared the community massive loss of life during the tsunami, protecting some 4,500 Irulas, or 900 families, from the full impact of the waves.

Snuggled between the Vellar estuary in the north and Coleroon estuary in the south, the Pichavaram forest spans some 1,100 hectares, its complex root system and inter-tidal ecosystem offering a sturdy barrier against seawater intrusion, waves and flooding.

According to statistics provided by Dr. Sivakumar, a marine biologist with the MSSRF in Chennai, the unlucky few who perished in the tsunami were those who were caught outside of the ecosystem’s protective embrace – some seven people from the Kannagi Nagar and Pillumedu villages, as well as 64 people who were stranded on the MGR Thittu, both located on sandbars devoid of mangroves.

The experience opened many tribal members’ eyes to the inestimable value of mangroves and their own vulnerability to the vagaries of the sea, sparking a grassroots-level conservation effort under the provisions of India’s Forest Rights Act.

“Until we were enlisted in the Scheduled Tribes List we did not know our rights, we were neither successful as hunter-gatherers nor as daily wage agricultural labourers,” says 55-year-old Pichakanna, an Irula tribal man who has happily exchanged agricultural employment for fishing and aquaculture activities that allow him to participate in mangrove conservation efforts in Tamil Nadu.

His salary now comes from prawn farming in the biodiverse mangrove forests, he tells IPS.

Dr. M. S. Swaminathan, chairman of the MSSRF, believes that “by conserving mangrove forests [we are] protecting the most productive coastal ecosystem that guarantees […] livelihood and ecological security.

“Bioshields are an indispensable part of Disaster Risk Resilience,” he adds.

This union between job creation and disaster management has been a stroke of unprecedented good fortune for the Irula people.

Thirty-three-year-old Nagamuthu, an Irula member whose parents – hailing from the Pichavaram forests – survived the tsunami, tells IPS, “If we were not included in the [Scheduled Tribes] List we would never have benefited from [development] schemes. We would have remained hunter-gatherers, eating rats and hunting snakes.

“Now we have developed a mangrove plantation on forest land granted to us by the government, and the Forest Rights Act has also given us fishing rights in the Protected Area of the Pichavaram Mangroves.”

Such developments are crucial at a time when mangroves are disappearing fast. According to a new study by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), “mangroves are being destroyed at a rate three to five times greater than the average rates of forest loss.”

By 2050, South Asia could lose as much as 35 percent of its mangroves that existed in 2000. Emissions resulting from such losses make up about a fifth of deforestation-related global carbon emissions, the report says.

Irulas now harvest minor forest produce from the rich waters around the mangroves, such as clusters of natural pearl oysters, which are very high in protein, for their own consumption.

“We have also learnt the skill of crab trapping, and we have installed crab fattening devices close to our homes deep in the mangrove creeks,” Nagamuthu tells IPS. “This has helped us carve out a sustainable livelihood.”

Tribe members have also been taught to dig canals in the eco-friendly ‘fish bone’ pattern that helps bring tidal creeks directly to their doorstep, where they can catch fresh fish for breakfast.

This canal system, now recommended by the Government of India, also helps in decreasing soil salinity, prevents mangrove degradation, and improves fish yields.

This, in turn, has improved livelihood security. Coupled with the acquisition of new and improved equipment – such as nets, boats, oars, engines, hooks and traps – many fisher families have completely turned their lives around.

Residents of villagers such as Killai, Pillumedu, Kannaginagar, Kalaingar, Vadakku, T.S. Pettai, and Pichavaram have now created a community fund that gathers 30 percent of each families’ monthly income; the savings have been used to construct a village temple, a school and drinking water facilities for 900 families from some seven villages.

Pichakanna, who is now the village elder for the newly established MGR Nagar Township, tells IPS proudly that the community fund has also helped establish an ‘early warning helpline’, which uses voice SMS technology to inform fisherfolk about wave height and wind direction, as well as provide six-hourly weather forecasts and early warnings of approaching cyclones.

A voice SMS broadcast aimed at women also passes on information about health and hygiene, maternity benefits and minimum wages.

While heads of states and development experts fly around the world to discuss the post-2015 ‘sustainable development’ agenda, here in Pichavaram, a forgotten tribe is already practicing a new way of life – and they are pointing the way forward to a sustainable future.

Edited by Kanya D’Almeida

Villagers climb through the rubble looking for survivors soon after the Oct. 29 landslide in south-central Sri Lanka Credit: Contributor/IPS

By Amantha Perera
COLOMBO, Nov 2 2014 (IPS)

When early warning systems fail, death comes quickly to unsuspecting victims of natural disasters. It is a reality that millions of Sri Lankans have experienced repeatedly in the last decade, and yet those responsible for preventing human fatalities continue to make the same mistakes.

The latest such tragedy – a result of ignorance and indifference to imminent danger – struck on the morning of Oct. 29, on the Meeriyabedda tea estate in Koslanda, a hilly region about 220 km east of the capital, Colombo.

After persistent rains, a two-km stretch of hillside caved in early morning, burying an estimated 66 small houses belonging to estate workers under some 30 feet of mud.

An initial situation report by the World Health Organisation (WHO) suggested there had been roughly 300 occupants in these homes; some had been away at work, and most of the children were in school when the disaster occurred.

Four days later four bodies had been recovered and 34 were listed as missing, a figure that was revised from an initial estimate of 100. Over 1,800 have been displaced and most of them may never return to their homes again.

“The real tragedy is there was ample time to move out, warnings telling [villagers] to do so and places that they could move into." -- Indu Abeyratne, manager of the early warning systems of Sri Lanka Red Cross Society (SLRCS)
But the land did not come barreling down the mountainside without a warning. In fact there had been warnings that these houses were a death trap almost a decade ago.

In 2005, the National Building Research Organisation (NBRO) carried out a survey of the area and made its first warning call.

“We found that the land on which the houses were standing was not stable and prone to landslides and our recommendation was relocation,” N K R Seneviratne, NBRO’s geologist for the south-central Badulla District, who headed the survey, told IPS.

In fact some officials at the landslide site said that the 66 houses that had been completely buried by the earth were clearly identified as those most in danger.

Six years later a similar survey was carried out and the recommendations were the same. Small landslides prompted the surveys. In both instances, Seneviratne said, recommendations were conveyed to villagers as well as public officials, who failed to take action on relocation.

Just before this most recent landslide, which occurred around 7.10 in the morning, Seneviratne said that his office had sent a warning to the Haldummulla Divisional Secretariat, the local public authority. Though some villagers were also made aware of the risks, most decided to stay put.

“There were warnings, but all that systematic dissemination process ended once it reached the Divisional Secretariat level; after that, at best, it was ad hoc, at worst nothing seems to have happened,” Indu Abeyratne, manager of the early warning systems of the Sri Lanka Red Cross Society (SLRCS), which is now coordinating relief efforts at the site, told IPS.

The villagers themselves missed the signs. In 2009, the Disaster Management Center (DMC), the main government agency overseeing early warnings and disaster assistance, together with the NBRO and the Red Cross, conducted a major community awareness programme in the Koslanda area.

Local villagers were advised to form community groups to act as watchdogs, scanning for imminent signs of danger and preparing evacuations plans. Megaphones were distributed, which villagers could use to gather crowds in an emergency, while the Meeriyabedda tea estate was also given a simple rain gauge to keep track of the levels of precipitation.

The NBRO has its own rain monitor at a school nearby and it was reading that at least 125 mm of rain had fallen overnight by the morning of Oct. 29. If anyone on the estate has been monitoring the village rain gauge, it should have been clear that the soil below was getting too soggy for anyone’s comfort.

But no one was watching the red flags, and when the earth collapsed in on itself with a loud boom, many were caught unawares.

“The real tragedy is there was ample time to move out, warnings telling them to do so and places that they could move into,” SLRCS’s Abeyratne said.

Gaps in early warning

Why did so many stay put in such eminent danger? That is the gnawing question that many assisting the relief effort are now trying to answer.

Gaps in the early warning mechanism have been identified since the disaster.

The main culprit seems to be the lack of an apex authority in control of local warnings, dissemination, evacuations and the absence of a rehearsed evacuation plan, despite the very real danger of landslides in the area.

Shanthi Jayasekera, the head of the Haldumulla Divisional Secretariat, told reporters that even though warnings had been issued there were no clear instructions on evacuations.

In other parts of Sri Lanka, especially along the coast devastated by the 2004 Asia tsunami, there are rehearsed and tested evacuation and early warning plans.

There are DMC units stationed at each of the country’s 25 districts, spread across its nine provinces, tasked with local coordination of such efforts, while the police and armed forces are used to disseminate warnings and handle mass evacuations.

The last such evacuation took place two-and-a-half years back in April 2012 when over a million left their homes along the coast after a tsunami warning.

Evacuation drills and rehearsals are carried out by the DMC every three months, but none seemed to have covered the Meeriyabedda area.

Less than ten days before the landslide, on Oct. 23, the DMC carried out landslide evacuations drills in six districts including Badulla, but unfortunately Meeriyabedda was not among those chosen.

“There was no such plan here, no one knew where to move out to and how to do it; [most] importantly there was no one, no authority, that was taking the lead,” Sarath Lal Kumara, DMC’s spokesperson, told IPS.

“What we should have had is a government agency-led early warning dissemination plan and an evacuation map,” he said.

Such systems do exist elsewhere in the country. According to Abeyratne, SLRCS’s trained volunteer groups work alongside the DMC and local public bodies, as well as the police and armed forces, during emergencies.

“It is a complex system, but it is a system that has been tested [in] real time here [in Sri Lanka] and has worked,” he said. In fact, SLRCS volunteers were among the first to reach the landslide-affected area this past Wednesday.

Perhaps one of the biggest gaps in the disaster management plan for the area was the failure to take into account the socio-economic conditions of those living in landslide-prone areas.

DMC’s Kumara told IPS said that most of the residents and victims were poor workers earning meager wages at nearby tea plantations.

Seneviratne added that the plantation workers are of Indian origin, descendents of those brought by British colonialists to work on the estates about 200 years ago.

The homes that were destroyed were not really houses, but one-room blocks, a dozen to a row, popularly known as ‘line houses’.

The majority of estate residents have lived this way for generations, earning a living by picking tea, tapping rubber or stripping cinnamon. They are entirely dependent on the plantations to which they belong.

A regional plantation company, Maskeliya Plantations Limited, owns the land where the deadly landslide took place. Three days after the landslide the military had to intervene to prevent villagers from assaulting officials of the company at the landslide site.

Sri Lanka’s disaster preparedness levels have improved from a barebones structure a decade ago, when the tsunami left 35,000 dead or missing. Since then it has been a steep learning curve on how to face up to the challenges of frequent extreme weather events.

“It is a situation that needs careful evaluation, not stopgap solutions,” Seneviratne said.

“Each disaster is a lesson on what can be done better, how to save lives,” SLRCS’s Abeyratne added.

If anyone needs a stark reminder on how important these lessons can be, just look up the mountainside at Meeriyabedda – or what is left of it.

Edited by Kanya D’Almeida

Local communities in India's Andaman and Nicobar Islands (ANI) have grown accustomed to modern water and sanitation infrastructure in the decade since the Asian Tsunami. Credit: Malini Shankar/IPS

By Malini Shankar
CAR NICOBAR, India, Sep 5 2014 (IPS)

When the 2004 Asian Tsunami lashed the coasts and island territories of India, one of the hardest hit areas were the Andaman and Nicobar Islands (ANI), which lie due east of mainland India, at the juncture of the Bay of Bengal and the Andaman Sea.

Remote and isolated, the tribal communities that occupy these idyllic isles have lived for centuries off the land, eschewing all forms of modern ‘development’ and sustaining themselves off the catch from the rich seas that surround them.

But when the tsunami struck without warning on Boxing Day, and traditional wooden houses erected on bamboo stilts were washed away, surviving commuties scattered across these islands have been forced to reckon with their primitive lifestyle and open the doors to some changes, especially in Car Nicobar, capital and administrative nerve-centre of the Nicobar Islands.

One of the most notable changes has been in the realm of sanitation, hitherto an unhealthy mix of open defacation and forest-based waste management.

Before a major relief and rehabiliation operation got underway in the aftermath of the tsunami, many tribal communities in Nicobarese villages had rejected potable water schemes such as the desalination plant installed in the village of Chaura, where the population of 1,214 people expressed hesitation about drinking water “from a machine”.

Toilet facilities were also extremely limited, with most residents “answering nature’s call by going behind a bush”, according to a sports ministry official from the division of Kakana who gave his name only as Benedict.

When IPS visited an interim tsunami shelter in Kakana, Car Nicobar, in 2007, 25 months after the tsunami, the situation had scarcely improved. A hole in the ground across from the relief shelter served as a communal facility, and could only be accessed by leaping onto a mound of dug-up earth and navigating the moist forest floor, hoping to avoid an encounter with snakes en route to the bathroom.

The ‘structure’ consisted of nothing more than a deep hole in the forest floor, covered on all four sides by plastic sheeting. It lacked a roof, a tap and a light.

Locals were still trying to come to terms with the fact that their freshwater supply, once a boundless natural bounty originating from springs in the volcanic islands, had become badly polluted after the natural catastrophe.

A World Health Organisation (WHO) report on sanitation prospects on the island in early 2005 found several cases of diarrhoeal outbreak among survivors housed in temporary camps, which affected hundreds of the roughly 1,300 residents.

Now, most villages have toilets and sanitation systems in individual homes, and locals are slowly opening up to the necessity of improved waste-management systems. IPS interviewed tsunami survivors across five Nicobar islands – Car Nicobar, Kamorta, Campbell Bay, Little Nicobar, and Katchall – who expressed the universal opinion that receiving access to water and sanitation facilities, as well as permanent shelters designed and constructed by the government of India, has done them good.

“There are a few issues like water scarcity and discomfort in the humid summer months,” said 46-year-old Muneer Ahmed, chief tribal captain in Pilpillow, Kamorta. “Zinc sheet roofing and concrete houses are tough as they are weather insenstive, compared to weather-sensitive straw huts.”

“But,” he told IPS, “We are grateful for greater security.” His words reflect a prevailing attitude across the islands that returning to flimsy thatched-roof homes – despite their proximity to the beach, which most Nicobarese depend on for sustenance – is simply not an option with the memory of the killer waves still fresh in the minds of the survivors.

The same holds true for water and sanitation. Local communities now get water from infrastructure provided by the Public Works Department, Sakshi Mittal, deputy commissioner of Nicobar, told IPS, adding, “They don’t reject this supply anymore.”

Coastal fisherfolk in Tamil Nadu’s tsunami battered coasts of Nagapatnam and Cuddalore are also benefiting from similar schemes, many of them overseen by the Swiss Development Agency. “We have tiled bathrooms with ventilation and western toilets with bidets,” a fisherwoman named Vanitha in Nagapatnam told IPS.

Such developments among fisher communities are crucial as the international community finalises a new roadmap for sustainable development that will replace the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) in 2015.

Key among the new poverty eradication targets, known as the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), will be the inclusion of the most marginalised segments of society.

In India, this includes fisher communities who were the worst hit in Tamil Nadu and Pondicherry, with about 150,000 fisherfolk losing their homes to the tsunami. In ANI, close to 10,000 people lost their lives and and scores more were exposed to tough living conditions.

Despite construction by the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) of 8,500 latrines around the islands after the tsunami, there remains a 35 percent deficit of decent sanitation facilities today.

In general, health indicators among the islands’ tribal population are higher than in other parts of India, with a maternal mortality ratio far below the national average of 250 deaths per 100,000 live births.

Although other health indicators like life expectancy rates were higher in the states of Kerala and ANI (67.6 percent and 73.4 percent respectively), the tsunami brought fresh new troubles, such as fears of malaria outbreaks, or epidemics of vector-borne diseases like dengue.

Relief workers and emergency response teams, sponsored by the government, international NGOs and the United Nations, took the lead on eradicating mosquito breeding grounds, distributing bednets, spraying insecticide in mosquito-heavy areas, as well as stocking local water bodies with a species of fish with an appetite for mosquito larvae.

According to a WHO assessment a year after the tsunami, Indian health authorities also launched measles vaccinations campaigns in the areas hardest hit by the disaster, namely the state of Tamil Nadu and the union territory of ANI, boosting measles immunisation coverage to 96.3 percent in the latter.

While they hope against hope to be spared another disaster, some of India’s most vulnerable communities are today far more resilient than they were a decade ago.

Part 1 of this series can be read here.

Edited by Kanya D’Almeida

Excerpt:

An old woman stands in front of her house, which was destroyed by flash floods in Sri Lanka. Credit: Amantha Perera/IPS

By Kalinga Seneviratne
BANGKOK, Jun 25 2014 (IPS)

A consortium of faith-based organisations (FBOs) made a declaration at a side event Wednesday at the 6^th Asian Ministerial Conference On Disaster Risk Reduction (AMCDRR), to let the United Nations know that they stand ready to commit themselves to building resilient communities across Asia in the aftermath of natural disasters.

Hosted this year by the Thai government, the conference is an annual collaboration with the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNISDR), with the aim of bringing regional stakeholders together to discuss the specific challenges facing Asia in an era of rapid climate change.

“I have seen the aftermath of disasters, where religious leaders and volunteers from Hindu temples, Islamic organisations and Sikh temples work together like born brothers." -- Dr. Anil Kumar Gupta, head of the division of policy planning at the National Institute of Disaster Management in India
A report prepared for the Bangkok conference by UNISDR points out that in the past three years Asia has encountered a wide range of disasters, from cyclones in the Philippines and major flooding in China, India and Thailand, to severe earthquakes in Pakistan and Japan.

In 2011 alone, global economic losses from extreme weather events touched 366 billion dollars, of which 80 percent were recorded in the Asia-Pacific region.

While the region accounts for 39 percent of the planet’s land area and hosts 60 percent of the world’s population, it only holds 29 percent of global wealth, posing major challenges for governments in terms of disaster preparedness and emergency response.

FBOs believe they can fill this gap by giving people hope during times of suffering.

“It’s not about the goods we bring or the big houses we build,” argued Jessica Dator Bercilla, a Filipina from Christian Aid, adding that the most important contribution religious organisations can make is to convince people they are not alone on the long road towards rebuilding their lives after a disaster.

The FBO consortium that drafted the statement – including Caritas Asia, Soka Gakkai International (SGI) and the ACT Alliance – held a pre-conference consultative meeting here on Jun. 22^nd during which some 50 participants from various faiths discussed the many hurdles FBOs must clear in order to deliver disaster relief and assist affected populations.

The final FBO Statement on Disaster Risk Reduction drew attention to faith organisations’ unique ability to work closely with local communities to facilitate resilience and peace building.

A declaration enshrined in the statement also urged the United Nations to recognise FBOs as a unique stakeholder in the Post-2015 Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction (HFA2) to be presented to the 3^rd U.N. World Conference on Disaster Risk Reduction (WCDRR) in 2015.

It also wants national and local governments to include FBOs when they organise regular consultations on DRR with relevant stakeholders, as FBOs are the ones who often sustain development programmes in the absence of international NGOs.

For example, since 2012 Caritas Indonesia has been working with a coastal community that has lost 200 metres of its coastal land in the past 22 years, in the Fata Hamlet of Indonesia’s East Nusa Tenggar Province, to build community resilience to rising seawaters.

The agency helped community members form the Fata Environment Lover Group, which now uses natural building methods to allow seawater to pass through bamboo structures before reaching the coast, so that wave heights are reduced and mangroves are protected.

Collectively, the three partners to the declaration cover a lot of ground in the region.

Caritas Asia is one of seven regional offices that comprise Caritas International, a Catholic relief agency that operates in 200 countries. SGI is a Japanese lay Buddhist movement with a network of organisations in 192 countries, while ACT is a coalition of Christian churches and affiliated organistaions working in over 140 countries.

All three are renowned for their contributions to the field of development and disaster relief. Caritas International, for instance, annually allocates over a million euros (1.3 million dollars) to humanitarian coordination, capacity building and HIV/AIDS programmes around the world.

“We would like to be one of the main players in the introduction of the DRR policy,” Takeshi Komino, head of emergencies for the ACT Alliance in the Asia-Pacific region, told IPS. “We are saying we are ready to engage.”

“What our joint statement points out is that our commitment is based on faith and that is strong. We can be engaged in relief and recovery activity for a long time,” added Nobuyuki Asai, programme coordinator of peace affairs for SGI.

Experts say Asia is an excellent testing ground for the efficacy of faith-based organisations in contributing to disaster risk reduction.

According to a survey by the independent Pew Research Centre, the Asia-Pacific region is home to 99 percent of the world’s Buddhists, 99 percent of the world’s Hindus and 62 percent of the world’s Muslims.

The region has also seen a steady increase in the number of Catholics, from 14 million a century ago to 131 million in 2013.

Forming links between these communities is easier said than done, with religious and communal conflicts plaguing the region, including a wave of Buddhist extremism in countries like Sri Lanka and Myanmar, a strong anti-Christian movement across Pakistan and attacks on religious minorities in China and India.

Some experts, however, say that the threat of natural catastrophe draws communities together.

According to Dr. Anil Kumar Gupta, head of the division of policy planning at the National Institute of Disaster Management in India, “When there is a disaster people forget their differences.

“I have seen the aftermath of disasters, where religious leaders and volunteers from Hindu temples, Islamic organisations and Sikh temples work together like born brothers,” he told IPS, citing such cooperation during major floods recently in the northern Indian states of Uttarakhand and Kashmir.

Loy Rego, a Myanmar-based disaster relief consultant, told IPS that the statement released today represents a very important landmark in disaster risk reduction.

“FBOs need to be more visible as an organised constituency in the roll-out of future frameworks,” he stated.

Rego believes that the biggest contribution FBOs could make to disaster risk management is to promote peaceful living among different communities.

“Respecting other religions need not be done in a secular way,” he said. “It only happens when they work with other FBOs in an inter-faith setting.”

(END)

Children at a care home in Orissa in India. Children worldwide are particularly vulnerable in disasters. Credit: Malini Shankar/IPS.

By Malini Shankar
DEHRADUN, India , Oct 2 2013 (IPS)

In Uttarakhand, the small Indian state in the Himalayan foothills that was a victim of flash floods that killed at least a thousand people in June this year and uprooted thousands of families, the story is told of a child who went every day to the helipad, believing his father will return when, in fact, the father died in the floods.

There are many such stories, Ray Kancharla of Save the Children told IPS.

Children are the most vulnerable when natural calamities strike. Children, women, the frail and infirm, and the elderly need special care and attention in disaster zones. Often they are unable to cope with the aftermath of a disaster, even if they have survived it, and might not be able to access search and rescue personnel, food aid, or relief material.

Separation is a trauma peculiar to children. Search and rescue workers, because of the emergency nature of their work, tend to be hurried. Often they do not have the time to check how many members of a family or group are still missing. Only visible survivors are picked up and evacuated to scattered shelters. Reunification becomes the task of disaster managers and relief agencies.

In January 2010, an earthquake struck Papua New Guinea, the small island state in the Pacific Ocean, and all the fatalities reported were helpless children because training in ‘disaster risk reduction’ had equipped adults with the knowledge that when the sea withdraws it heralds a deadly tsunami.

“No adult died because adults knew that when the sea withdraws [from the shore], it portends the arrival of a tsunami, and all the adults fled to higher ground,” said Aloysius Laukai of the New Dawn FM radio station. “The unfortunate casualties were all children,” Laukai told IPS.

“Mapping of the frail, infirm and elderly is very important in any disaster-prone area,” Aapga Singh of HelpAge India, an NGO dedicated to the elderly, told IPS after the Uttarakhand flood disaster. “It would not only be helpful to rescue these people in an efficient manner during emergencies, but also in relief disbursal; vulnerable people are either left behind or get in last.”

There are instances of children being separated from their parents and families during every recent natural calamity. The December 2004 Asian tsunami saw a seven-year -old girl separated from her family for nearly eight years before she was reunited with them in Sumatra in Indonesia only in 2012.

Even if public memory is short, trauma to the survivors can last a lifetime. Lessons learnt have to be documented in public domains to avoid recurrence of disasters in calamity-affected landscapes, say activists.

Separations have been rampant after the Asian tsunami, the Kosi floods in Bihar in India (2008), Cyclone Aila in Bangladesh and India (2009), a super cyclone in Orissa, India (1999), floods in Assam in India (2012), and the Uttarakhand floods (2013).

Trauma in children manifests itself in ways such as “thumb sucking, bedwetting, clinging to parents, sleep disturbances, loss of appetite, fear of the dark, regression in behaviour, and withdrawal from friends and routines,” Murali Kunduru of Plan India, an NGO, told IPS.

With loss of appetite manifesting in children suffering from separation-induced trauma, the significance of culture-sensitive food security assumes critical importance.

Apart from the primary trauma of separation, and battle for survival against the power of calamities, women and children are particularly vulnerable to lack of water and sanitation.

”Without adequate nutritious food, both children and adults lose immunity and become predisposed to water-borne infections and sicknesses like “diarrhoea, cholera, typhoid, respiratory infections, skin and eye infections which are all likely to occur when water supply and sanitation services are disrupted during disasters,” adds Kunduru.

When nursing mothers are rendered homeless because of disasters, they need to be housed in shelters which have gender sensitivity and adequate privacy. Similarly shelters need to conform to the needs of physically challenged persons – ramps for wheelchair-bound refugees have to be factored in during their construction.

In the Uttarakhand floods, the tourist economy was hit so hard that people dependent on tourism for their livelihood migrated to larger cities and towns in the plains to seek employment.

“Children’s education is affected by disasters when adults migrate in search of livelihoods, often leaving adolescent boys in charge of families; young children, especially boys, drop out of school to earn a livelihood, disrupting their education resulting in lifelong impact,” says Shekhar Ambati of Aide et Action.

With women moving out of kitchens to supplement family incomes being earned by their young wards, children’s nutrition suffers.

“As part of our working paper on development-induced displacement we found that around 25 percent of children had to drop out of school. This is one of the risks to the population due to displacement,” writes Dr. K Hemalatha, a community worker, in a working paper on development-induced displacement, co-authored by Fr. Arun Anthony and Pitambari Joshalkar and published by Christ University, Bangalore. The study was funded by the International Federation of Catholic Universities.

Often the lack of inclusivity rebounds on the vulnerable during disasters. Planning can go a long way in efficient disaster mitigation. Database management of population, knowledge of consumption patterns, standards of living and human development index have to go into planning to mitigate the effect of disasters, particularly on children and the vulnerable in calamity-prone areas, say activists.

The discovery of radioactive contamination in ‘shiitake’ mushrooms grown in Manazuru town, Kanagawa prefecture, some 300 km away from the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, has raised public clamour for compensation.

Soon after the discovery, on Apr. 5, Kanagawa authorities directed farmers and organisations dealing with agricultural produce not to ship shiitake mushrooms, a delicacy prized for its nutritive and medicinal properties in East Asian countries.

Some of the Manazuru mushroom samples were found to have over 141 becquerels of radioactive cesium per kg, while samples taken from Murata, Miyagi Prefecture, showed cesium levels as high as 350 becquerels.

The discovery comes as residents of areas surrounding the Fukushima Daiichi reactor, hit by a massive earthquake and tsunami on Mar. 11, 2011, are raising compensation demands from the Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO), the operator of the Fukushima Daiichi plant.

Residents of the once scenic Odaka village, located 10 km from the plant, who have been forced to abandon their farms, schools and homes, have pinned hopes for adequate recompense on a lawsuit they filed against TEPCO in February.

“The lawsuit is the only thing we have to give us some meaning to our lives after we lost our homes, livelihoods, community and the trust we had for the authorities,” Susumi Yamasawa, who heads a local citizen group that has filed the suit, told IPS.

Yamasawa, 69, a farmer who had cultivated rice for decades in Odaka said: “Life was peaceful and we did not worry too much about risks from the nuclear plant nearby until the accident.”

“The hardest is seeing our close-knit community disintegrate,” Yamasawa said. “Youth and children have left the area to avoid the radiation risk. The future is bleak.”

Yamasawa’s lawsuit adds to a whole clutch filed by citizens affected by the nuclear accident who are blaming the government and TEPCO for the predicament they find themselves in.

“Patience is running out,” Ryuzo Sato, an Odaka resident, told IPS. He feels that the availability of temporary housing, monetary reimbursements and living allowances can never fully compensate for what the residents have lost.

Official reported last month that TEPCO may have to pay out 56.2 billion dollars – a figure that could escalate – in compensation for business and financial losses from the nuclear accident. More than 1.7 million people have been affected to varying degrees.

Hiroyuki Kawai, who is leading 42 shareholders in their bid for compensation from TEPCO for negligence at the tsunami-sparked disaster at the plant, said senior managers must be made to pay personally.

The TEPCO shareholders are suing 27 executives of the company for 68 billion dollars, a record sum in the world.

Kawai, who has represented several anti-nuclear movements in Japan, said the case is aimed at fixing individual responsibility for the drastic mistakes made by members of the TEPCO management.

“TEPCO failed to take into account earthquake and tsunami warnings that were made by researchers who pointed to the huge risk posed on the Fukushima nuclear reactors from a disaster…The accident clearly points to negligence and irresponsibility on the part of individuals who represent the management,” Kawai said.

Yui Kimura, a shareholder, told media on Mar. 27 that the plaintiffs had repeatedly raised the issue of risks to the nuclear plant from an earthquake and tsunami, but the management ignored their concerns.

“The Japanese system is such that TEPCO is not investigated by prosecutors for their mistakes. Our decision to go to courts is to force the individuals who made the mistakes to take personal responsibility and pay from their own pockets,” she said.

TEPCO has assigned pay and bonus cuts on its employees and set up panels to collect compensation. The utility has borrowed public money and is reporting a 7.6 billion dollar loss after the decommissioning of the Fukushima nuclear reactors.

Kawai said the crux of the lawsuit is to reform the Japanese system which allows failed directors to hide behind the corporate wall, stepping down from their positions when they make a mistake, but nothing more.

“The only way to remedy an unfair the system is to get the people who made the wrong decisions to pay for their mistakes using their own assets,” Kawai said.

Reports issued after the accident illustrate lack of an emergency manual in TEPCO to deal with a severe accident and blatant disregard for safety measures in the plants including safety drills.

“When we used to protest against nuclear power, we were looked down upon by the public as strange people,” said Kimura. “Now they know the truth and support us. Nuclear power is about vested interests. We must stand up and protect life.”

The Fukushima crisis could have been prevented if TEPCO had carried out simple preventive measures, such as placing an emergency power source on higher ground, Kawai said.

Radiation leaked over a large area, forcing tens of thousands of people from their homes and rendering farming impossible in an ever-widening radius – as illustrated by the radioactive shiitake mushrooms in Kanagawa prefecture, part of which falls in the Greater Tokyo metropolitan area.

On Mar. 17, a government panel recommended that about 74,000 dollars be paid to each individual unable to return home for the next five years because of radiation contamination – though this is seen as inadequate.

The money is also intended to compensate for the mental suffering of evacuees whose homes “are in a zone where it is difficult to return for a long time,” said the compensation panel under the ministry of education, culture, sports, science and technology.

Victims who fall in that zone will receive the full value of their real estate, as calculated before the disaster struck, if the recommendations of the panel are followed.

Fishers benefit greatly from community radio. Credit: Malini Shankar/IPS

By Malini Shankar
BANGALORE, India, Apr 6 2012 (IPS)

Community Radio (CR) broadcasting in India, long bound by red tape, has received a fillip with the government announcing a hike in advertising tariffs and the auction of licenses.

“The increase in advertising tariffs will improve revenue generation for CR stations and make them sustainable,” Sajan Venniyoor, founder member of the New Delhi-based CR Broadcasters Forum, told IPS.

On Mar. 25, the Directorate of Audio Visual Publicity (DAVP) announced a quadrupling of advertising revenues for CR stations to Indian rupees 240 (4.5 dollars) per minute.

Venniyoor, who is on the expert committee of the government’s CR Broadcast Support Fund, said although CR stations have support from non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and multilateral funding, things will vastly improve once advertising revenues roll in.

“Besides, large infusions of money from government sources could prove to be a double-edged sword and completely skew the programming of a CR station,” Venniyoor said.

“As things stand CR growth has been stymied by security concerns and a telecom ministry which treats a wireless license application from a small, rural CR station in exactly the same way as it treats a mobile tower application from a telecom major, leading to a merry paper chase,” Venniyoor said.

R. Sreedhar, director of the Commonwealth Educational Media Centre for Asia (CEMCA), calculates that the new tariff will allow CR stations to more than break even, given that the average running expenditure is about 2,000 dollars per month.

CEMCA works to encourage the development and sharing of open learning, distance education knowledge, resources and technologies.

“A CR station is supposed to broadcast a minimum of eight hours, though the license is for 24 hours. Even if they manage to get advertisements for about 50 percent of the allowed time, the station becomes sustainable,” Sreedhar told IPS.

If a CR station gets advertisements for 20 minutes per day, it means it can earn about 2,838 dollars a month with enough to pay the advertisement managers, said Sreedhar, adding that advertising on CR has the potential to boost the local economy and human resources.

The reluctance of the government to allow expansion of CR can be seen from the fact it issued the first license seven years after a Supreme Court ruling in 1995 declaring airwaves to be public property.

News reporting has remained banned on CR and a new policy announced in 2006 stipulated that 50 percent of the content had to be created by and for the community.

Supporters of CR consider 2011 to be a landmark year because that was when CEMCA announced that as many as 231 licenses were in the pipeline and a CR Broadcast Support Fund was mooted.

Given the lack of ‘definition of news’, CR broadcasters fear that airing anything remotely connected to current affairs could result in the revocation of license.

Ajith Lawrence, who started Radio Alakal (Radio Waves) in 2006 on the strength of the Supreme Court ruling, came to grief after being on the air for just a few months, thanks to narrow interpretations of what constitutes news.

Lawrence said Radio Alakal was started with a view to providing fishers and their families living on the Thiruvananthapuram coastal belt with vital information such as weather conditions and the availability of catch along with music and entertainment.

Radio Alakal quickly caught on because the fishers were already sensitised to the value of timely information through having lived through the devastation of the December 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami.

“Even the tsunami experience did not stop local officials from withdrawing the license,” Lawrence told IPS. “It is time the government woke up to the huge potential of CR in disaster management and in improving the lives of marginalised coastal communities.”

In such circumstances, CR stations have desisted from reporting even earthquakes.

Ashish Sen, president of the World Association of Community Radio Broadcasters (AMRC) in Asia Pacific says that “without definition of what comprises news, confusion reigns – the digging of a well or a marriage can be news in a small village.”

Sreedhar believes that there is now new thinking in government on CR going by a bold plan to auction FM licenses and earn revenues. In a statement on Mar. 20, the DAVP announced that it expects to earn over 341 million dollars from the auctions.

There are fears, however, that some CR stations have huge advantages over others when it comes to attracting advertisers.

Arti Jaiman, station director of Gurgaon Ki Awaaz (Voice of Gurgaon), says that the mission of his CR, to articulate the rights of marginalised communities, is not likely to attract advertisement revenue.

On the other hand Gurgaon ki Awaaz, which started broadcasting in November 2009, is located in Gurgaon which falls in the state of Haryana but has the advantage of being part of the National Capital Region of Delhi.

Other CR stations do not have such advantages of location and, given the government’s restrictions on range and power of transmitters, may not reach the kind of audiences that will attract advertisers.

“We will just have to wait and see how all this plays out,” Venniyoor said.

*This story was produced with the support of UNESCO.

By Amantha Perera and - -
WELIGAMA, Sri Lanka, Mar 10 2012 (IPS)

The gentle waves of Weligama bay that lap at the small, tight-knit fishing village of Kaparratota, 140 km south of Colombo, can be deceptive.

The waters of Weligama bay can prove deceptively calm for fishers. Credit: Indika Sriyan/IPS

A total of 29 people had died along Sri Lanka’s southern coast, and over 10,000 buildings damaged, though Weligama was the worst affected area. Many who faced the storm were left stunned by its ferocity as well as the suddenness with which it whipped up and died down.

“We never knew a storm was coming, no one told us…suddenly the sea just rose,” Lamahevage Chandana, a fisher told IPS. He survived by floating on the waves for seven hours, his small boat smashed.

Experts say the tragedy could have been avoided if ordinary folk like Chandana, as well as authorities, had paid better attention to changing weather patterns around this island country.

Of late, extreme weather events have increased in frequency, Mudalihamige Rathnayake, who heads the geography department at the Ruhuna University in southern Sri Lanka, told IPS.

“Gale-force winds hitting towns and villages are being reported as cyclones, or mini-cyclones, which they are not,” he said. “They are the creation of cooler air rushing in to fill the vacuum created by an extreme temperature rise in a small area.”

Gale-force winds are defined as those reaching a speed of up to 117 km per hour on the Beaufort scale and though not as strong as hurricanes, they create exceptionally high sea waves and are capable of uprooting trees.

Statistics show that there are now fewer rainy days, with the monsoon now dumping its water in a shorter time span. This was what happened between January and February 2011, when a year’s worth of rain fell on parts of the Eastern Province in one month, flooding hundreds of villages.

Nimal Dissanayake, who heads the Rice Research Institute of Sri Lanka, told IPS that the changing rain patterns have forced experts to develop quick maturing rice varieties. “We have developed them, but need a better understanding of the rain patterns to recommend them,” he told IPS.

Rathnayake recently carried out a survey of awareness levels among ordinary people in southern Sri Lanka of changing weather patterns and was disappointed with the results.

“There is hardly any knowledge of climate change or changing weather. No one is really interested in knowing how to cope with natural disasters,” he said.

Rathnayake found the lack of knowledge and the disinterest surprising given that the southern coast of Sri Lanka was pulverised by the 2004 Asian tsunami. Signboards that dot the coast do indicate higher, safer ground to run to in the event of a tsunami.

“Everybody knows that they have to run if a tsunami is coming, but they don’t know how to deal with a cyclone, or fast moving winds that come in short bursts. No one even thinks that a prolonged drought may have been caused by changing climate,” he said.

Only around 20 percent of Sri Lanka’s 1,520 km coast is prone to erosion, but the bulk of it is in the densely populated southern and western coasts that take the brunt of the monsoons.

The western and southern provinces account for over 40 percent of the population or around eight million people. Economically, these two provinces contribute around 47 percent of the GDP, with the western province serving as the island’s financial and administrative centre.

Much of the erosion-prone coast is protected by a sea wall of boulders, a solution that the Coast Conservation Department (CCD) has now found to be counter-productive.

Anil Premarathne, CCD director-general, told IPS that the barriers built of boulders limit economic activity and transfer the erosion from one part of the shore to another.

The CCD is now encouraging ‘softer solutions’ like wider beaches, sand filling, mangroves and strict zoning regulations. But with the coast thickly populated, Premarathne says it is difficult to even discuss these options.

“In Sri Lanka we need strict zoning measures,” Premarathne said. “But unless there are beaches where there are no houses or businesses nearby – which is hardly the case in the south and the west – it is not easy to implement.

“Because erosion takes place over many years, even decades, there is not much concern. People don’t seem to notice it happening nor are they worried,” he said. Already some coastal urban areas are at risk from rising sea levels.

Coastal districts like Gampaha, that lies just north of Colombo, meet at least 40 percent of water requirements by pumping out groundwater, increasing the risk of saline ingress.

“Salinity will rise in coastal areas if sea levels rise,” said Premarathne. “We have also seen that wave heights are tending to get higher during the monsoons,” he added.

Sri Lanka’s National Climate Change Adaption Strategy (NCCAS) has prioritised mainstreaming adaptation, healthier human settlements and minimisation of impacts on food security for the period between 2011 and 2016.

Since stopping climate change is unrealistic, the NCCAS focuses on preparing and understanding what needs to be done by way of preparation, economically and environmentally.

Yet, most ordinary people do not take climate change seriously. Chandana, even after his near death experience, says nonchalantly: “These incidents happen…we just have to live with them.”

Such indifference, says Rathnayake, is cause for concern. “These things are beyond our control, but we can be better prepared to face them and save lives.”

Excerpt:

Yumi Goto, 60, lives with her husband in a temporary shelter on a windy hill that overlooks vast stretches of tsunami-devastated seacoast where her home was once located.

“The huge earthquake and tsunami destroyed the life I had known till now. We are waiting to return to our former lives as soon as possible,” Goto told IPS.

Over the past month, Goto’s family has resumed its traditional occupation, but they are nowhere near harvesting seaweed and oyster on the scale they did before the Mar. 11 catastrophe that devastated the Tohoku region covering the worst-affected prefectures of Fukushima, Iwate and Miyagi.

A poll conducted by local officials in the region last week indicated that fewer than 20 percent of displaced residents wanted to leave Minami-Sanriku which straddles bustling fishing ports, fertile farmland and small towns in the Miyagi prefecture.

For centuries, these pristine northern areas provided marine and agricultural resources for the capital Tokyo, with traditional livelihoods remaining undisturbed and communities content to remain isolated from the drastic global changes around them.

“Minami-Sanriku is an example of the challenges facing the post-disaster recovery process. The population, as illustrated by the polls, is deeply rooted in its traditional ways and does not want to move to new locations,” explained Prof. Akio Shimada, public policy expert at Tohoku University.

Japan has embarked on a vast recovery programme for Tohoku that the government says will take three years. For planners Tohoku with its displaced and aging population presents several dilemmas two months away from the anniversary of Japan’s worst disaster in recent times.

Populations in Tohoku’s disaster-affected towns are being asked to make tough decisions. Some like Goto and her husband have decided to remain, knowing that they can continue fishing only if they stay on in Minami-Sanriku.

But the younger generation is not so sure and already the total number of households in Minami-Sanriku has shrunk from 5,400 before the disaster to 4,893.

Population expert Ryuzaburo Sato at the National Institute of Population and Social Security Research in Tokyo told IPS that the shrinking of the rural population had begun even before the March disaster. “Youth prefer to seek jobs in big cities that offer them stable and modern lifestyles,” he told IPS.

Japan’s population fell by a record 123,000 in 2010, falling for the fourth consecutive year. The total number of new adults or people who turned 20 years in 2011 was 1.24 million, or less than one percent of the national population of 127.36 million.

Tohoku already has the lowest population density in the country with less than 200 people per sq km.

Determined to establish a new concept in the recovery process, Tohoku mayors and experts are pushing for a highly localised development strategy which, they say, is crucial for revitalising the region.

One of the more vociferous advocates of a new development model in Tohoku is Hiroya Masuda, former mayor of Miyakoshi, a fishing town of 60,000 people in Iwate prefecture, also devastated by the earthquake and tsunami.

Masuda is spearheading a movement pushing for funds from the central government to prop up the local marine industry as a priority. This, he insists, will boost the local economy and encourage the younger generation to stay on.

“Pre-disaster Tohoku depended on the economy of Tokyo given that our policies were based on selling our produce to the big companies in the capital. This is the time to start thinking locally and create a sustainable Tohoku,” he said.

Similar demands are heard in Fukushima prefecture that is grappling with radiation contamination from the disaster-damaged nuclear reactor the local government had accepted 40 years ago in exchange for funds from Tokyo to support economic development.

Former governor Eisaburo Sato is a vehement critic of Japanese traditional development policy which he has publicly condemned as wasteful and not benefiting local communities that are forced to play the role of supporting rich companies in Tokyo.

Fukushima is already reporting the largest exodus of people – 30,000 from the total of 45,000 – reported from Tohoku. The general trend is for older residents to stay back while the working population, worried about jobs and health risks, has moved out.

Shimada explained to IPS that the Tohoku disaster, an important turning point for local economies, is now providing lessons in disaster recovery.

“Funds must be targeted into innovative projects that will enrich the local people which is what the new recovery budget must support,” he said. He pointed to larger support for technology transfer to the traditional fishing and agriculture sectors.

Biotechnology-driven fish farms, new energy research, and high quality agricultural produce are some of the projects now being proposed for Tohoku.

Goto, despite her determination to restart her life in Minami-Sanriku, also wants change. “Since I was a teenager I have been helping my father and then my husband to grow seaweed and manage the oyster catches. The work is strenuous for women.”

“While I am too old to move out, I am sure new businesses would encourage my daughters to stay on and make Minami-Sanriku an attractive place to live in,” she mused.

Japan plans to boost civilian nuclear exports even as it tries to appease its population angered at radiation leaks from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, crippled by an earthquake and tsunami on Mar. 11, last year.

“The reason why Japan is taking these dangerous steps (exports) is to gain business opportunities and diplomatic clout with developing countries,” explained Yuki Tanabe, an expert at the Japan Centre for a Sustainable Environment and Society (JACSES).

Last month, bills to allow export of nuclear plants to Vietnam and Jordan, as part of bilateral co-operation, were approved by the foreign affairs committee of the House of Representatives.

Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda has justified the deals saying these countries “badly want Japan’s high-level technology.” But Noda also said that Japan must help “enhance the safety of nuclear power plants in those countries.”

Agreements are pending with several others countries, including India, Bangladesh and Turkey, covering the construction of power plants, their operation and management by Japanese companies.

But, environment activists in Japan and the recipient countries have joined hands against these projects in a campaign that has gained momentum as a result of radiation leakage at Fukushima.

Apart from the huge health risks posed by radioactive contamination, activists are pointing to the exorbitant costs of nuclear power that have been all too evident in Japan over the past few months.

Radiation contamination following the meltdown at Fukushima has forced more than 150,000 people living in the vicinity to flee.

Additionally, tens of thousands of hectares of agricultural land have been declared dangerous for food production. Tests conducted this month in the surrounding sea have indicated contamination of marine resources, making them inedible.

Tokyo Electric Power Company, the operator of the Fukushima reactor, is now faced with compensation payments worth more than 60 billion dollars forcing it to request public funding.

Such difficult issues were highlighted at an anti-nuclear conference organised Jan. 14-15 in Yokohama by Japanese and international grassroot organisations lobbying for a nuclear-free world.

Speakers from countries such as South Korea, Canada and the European Union presented cases that illustrated strong domestic opinion against nuclear power.

Praful Bidwai, an internationally known Indian campaigner for safe and renewable energy, explained to a packed audience the importance of regular protests and demonstrations by local people who live close to nuclear power plants.

Currently three percent of India’s energy needs are met by nuclear plants, but plans are afoot to increase this to 20 percent by 2020 to support economic growth and meet power demand.

India, Bidwai said, has not signed the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty and has a poor nuclear safety record with several accidents, fires, explosions and radioactive water spills that have exposed workers and the public to radiation.

In October 2011, Noda and Indian foreign minister Somanahalli Krishna agreed to resume talks on how to create conditions for a Japanese-Indian partnership in promoting peaceful atomic energy.

Officials and business proponents of nuclear technology say that Japan’s nuclear exports would continue and point to competition from South Korea.

But Kim Heyung of the South Korean Environment Movement against Nuclear Power, explained at Yokohama that the Fukushima accident has raised awareness among the public about the dangers of nuclear power.

Indeed, a poll conducted in October showed that 68 percent of South Koreans opposed to the building of new reactors, signalling lack of public support for six new nuclear power sites proposed by the government.

South Korea signed a new nuclear export pact with United Arab Emirates last year and is competing in Finland with Japan to win orders.

Mongolia, a uranium rich country, has also become a focal point in the anti-nuclear debate following news reports in May last year that Japan and the United States are planning to construct a spent fuel disposal facility in the country.

Selnge Lkhagvajav, a member of the Mongolian Green Party that has successfully worked against nuclear power, told the meeting in Yokohama that her country does not have the experts or technology to accept nuclear power or waste.

“Nuclear power countries see Mongolia with its lax laws as a dumping site. We will fight against such moves,” she told IPS.

Japan, which depends on nuclear power for 30 percent of its energy, has been promising to implement stringent measures to raise the protection bar against Fukushima-type accidents. But, Tanabe from JACSES dismisses such measures as futile.

Meanwhile, ongoing stress tests ordered on nuclear facilities have drastically reduced Japan’s nuclear energy output and activists see in this an opportunity for the country to look for safer energy sources.

By Suvendrini Kakuchi
AIZUWAKAMASTU, Japan, Jan 1 2012 (IPS)

Hideo Sato, 47, and his family escaped to this snowy city 200 km from the radiation emitting Fuksuhima power plant that was struck by a massive earthquake-driven tsunami on Mar. 11.

“We were forced to move from our house in Okuma-machi barely eight kilometres from the damaged nuclear plant. We wanted to protect our children from radiation, but now we are at the mercy of the government,” he said.

Nine months after the disaster, Sato, a former employee at a car sales company, lives on a 1,500-dollar monthly unemployment dole. His wife is occupied with looking after their three children and cannot take up a job.

Sato’s plight is shared by tens of thousands of people from the tsunami-battered coastline of northeastern Tohoku, that was home to factories producing automobile components and semiconductors for export.

The World Bank estimated the economic cost of Tohoku to be 235 billion dollars, making it the most expensive natural disaster in history.

“The nuclear disaster has added to Japan’s financial woes. The Tohoku disaster, the high Yen, and the global economic crisis spell a bleak forecast for the new year,” Kenji Obayashi, an economist at the Asia Pacific research centre at Waseda University, told IPS.

Japan, the world’s third largest economy after the United States and China, is now facing difficult economic decisions as the country gropes its way to recovery.

Apart from the crippling natural and nuclear disasters, the Japanese economy is reeling from a Yen that has strengthened almost 30 percent against the dollar, hurting export competitiveness. In turn, this has increased unemployment and depressed domestic demand.

To top it all is the scare of a loss of energy supplies for the resource poor country.

Prof. Tsutomu Toichi, advisor to the Institute of Energy Economics, warns in this month’s ‘Nippon’, a leading news magazine, that the non-operation of nuclear power reactors, that hitherto met 30 percent of national energy demands, has created a bleak picture.

“At present local governments are refusing to allow operations (of nuclear power plants) to resume after inspections because of public wariness towards nuclear power. To make up for the shortfall in electricity supply the government will step up generation from existing thermal plants. In such a scenario fuel costs would soar, costing the manufacturing industry 38 percent higher in electricity fees,” he wrote.

Against this depressing backdrop, the Japanese government approved a 1.16 trillion dollar draft budget last week for the fiscal year, starting April 2012. Allocation for disaster reconstruction was set at 150 billion dollars.

Tokyo Electric Power Co., the operator of the Fukushima plant, has asked for 8.8 billion dollars in aid from the state-backed Nuclear Damage Liability Facilitation Fund for compensation payments to those who had voluntarily evacuated. This is additional to the 11.5 billion dollars already granted to TEPCO.

Obayashi explained to IPS that the latest budget will not herald a miraculous transformation but serve as a stopgap measure to deal with the grim reality of an aging population that is increasing social security spending – already at a record high of 270 billion dollars or one-third of the national budget.

National unemployment rates stands at 4.7 percent, with disaster affected prefectures now reporting close to seven percent.

Currently, more than three million people or 20 percent of the working sector earns less than 20,000 dollars annually, on the poverty line.

Named the “working class poor”, the increasing number of people who work at two or even three jobs to get by are a poignant symbol of the breakdown of a once dynamic economy where unemployment was almost negligible.

Developments in Aizuwakamastu, now home to 6,000 nuclear evacuees from Fukushima vicinities, have become a focal point for ongoing discussions on post-disaster recovery.

This city of 150,000 people known for its pristine mountain landscape and hot springs was already struggling with domestic economic recovery when the Tohoku disaster struck, badly affecting tourism and agriculture.

Kumi Inamura, a member of the Aizuwakamastu town management organisation, told IPS that the city is taking tentative steps to boost the local economy through local solutions.

“Aizuwakamastu can no longer depend on injections of public funds from the central government because Tokyo cannot afford to do this,” she explained. Her organisation is now helping local business projects by supporting people who can start new ventures and boost jobs.

Aizuwakamastu is facing a 90 percent drop in the number of tourists this year, affecting local souvenir shops and hotels. “Income from tourism was heavily dependent on school excursions that have fallen drastically after the radiation scare in Fukushima,” Inamura said.

Agricultural produce has been affected and local small and medium companies in the area that supplied the information technology industry face tough competition as large Japanese conglomerates begin to build factories in cheaper parts of Asia.

Ideas being floated include turning Aizu University, the lone higher education institution in the city into a venture business centre and giving students venture capital.

Smaller incubating projects that receive support are businesses owned by women or those that promote local brands.

Obayashi said such developments are modest but represent a crucial transformation to Japanese society and economy. “The stirring in Aizuwakamatsu indicate a growing desire in localities to do things their own way,” said Obayashi.

Such moves, he said, challenge the post-war economic miracle in Japan when links between the bureaucracy and industry created the invincible Japan Inc. “That is crumbling now. We are moving to more diversity and change,” he said.

Excerpt:

By - - and Amantha Perera
COLOMBO, Dec 23 2011 (IPS)

Seven years after monster waves crashed into homes, hotels and vehicles on Sri Lanka’s coast, people in this island nation continue to be haunted by demons from the sea.

For those who lived to tell the tale of how 30,000 souls perished on that fateful Boxing Day in 2004, the slightest change in the mood of the sea is enough to send a chill down their spines.

Udayam Sujatha, who survived the tsunami after being dragged some way by the waves, now lives with her husband near the coast in the eastern town of Batticaloa. “I sometimes hate the sea,” she told IPS.

Yet, thousands of people who live in the numerous towns and villages along the coast have set aside their fears and managed to put their shattered lives back together again.

In Weligama, a small town with a scenic bay about 140 km south of the capital Colombo, residents say they are slowly coming to terms with the tragedy, although they are periodically reminded of how destructive nature can be.

One month before the seventh anniversary of the Asian tsunami Weligama lost 14 people and 11 were listed as missing when gale force winds and rains hit the area.

Most of those killed or reported missing at Weligama on Nov. 25 were fishermen out at sea when the winds roared in. In all, 29 were killed and over 8,800 houses damaged along the southern coast.

“The whole area is like a giant funeral now,” said Chandana (one name), a fisherman from Weligama. “The last time something like this happened was in 2004. We never thought that the sea demons would come back so soon.”

All along the coast there are reminders of what started out as a calm December morning seven years ago. About 50 km north of Weligama, at Peraliya, stands a large replica of the Bamiyan Buddha statue facing the ocean, erected with funds from Japanese donors in memory of those who perished.

A little distance away stands another memorial where a packed train was swept off its tracks by the waves. Over 1,000 died inside carriages that later were to become sought after props for TV stand-ups.

The beaches are dotted with reminders of the tsunami. Near Sujatha’s home there are three monuments listing the names of people who died.

There are also large, newly constructed villages. Tsu-chi village in Siribopura in southern Hambantota district has 1,000 houses built for those who had lost their homes in the tsunami.

Every year mourners gather at the beach on Dec. 26 to remember all those killed in the tragedy, though the memorials are becoming less elaborate.

“We have been getting over it,” said Chandana, the fisherman from Weligama.

Till the tsunami Sri Lankans did not pay much attention to natural disasters. But since then there has been heightened emphasis on disaster mitigation and early warning.

In May 2005, five months after the tsunami struck, parliament enacted a law to set up a Disaster Management Centre (DMC).

But as the tragic events of Nov. 25 show, the island is a long way away from preparedness. No early warning was issued before the gale force winds swept ashore despite all the investments in disaster preparedness.

Pradeep Koddippilli, the DMC assistant director-in-charge of early warnings, told IPS that the centre had not received any warning from the meteorology department tasked with assessing dangerous weather events. “We kept contacting them repeatedly through the 25th, but there was no warning,” he said.

Despite the millions spent on setting up early warning towers and networks, a recent assessment by the U.N.’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs released in November said that the meteorology department, in fact, lacked the technical capacity to predict rainfall and fast moving weather patterns.

“The U.N. assessment confirms the technical capacity of the department of meteorology needs to be further developed in order to enable it to deliver reliable quantitative rain forecasts,” said the report titled ‘Disaster Response and Preparedness Assessment Mission to Sri Lanka’.

Experts told IPS that multiple dissemination systems are at the disposal of the DMC – ideal for a country where communication infrastructure is poor in rural areas.

In addition to the 67 warning towers set up island-wide, the DMC can also tap into the wide network of public officials at the village level, volunteers with the Sri Lanka Red Cross Society, secure satellite communications and, at least, one national mobile network to send out alerts.

“You cannot say what is the best system because each one has its own strengths and weaknesses. What is important is to have several systems to make sure vulnerable communities receive warnings in time,” Suranga Kahandawa, disaster management specialist at the World Bank, told IPS.

However, none of the networks was working when the gale struck, and there was no warning. Experts said that awareness on how to respond to different warning levels was also poor among communities.

“We need to raise community awareness levels so that they understand clearly the various levels of public messages,” Indu Abeyarathne, project manager (early warning) at the Sri Lanka Red Cross Society, said.

Abeyarathne said many tend to mistake initial alerts as an evacuation order. A typical reaction was seen this week when rumours spread in some parts of the country of a tsunami, when the DMC had announced it would be conducting a drill on Dec. 20 afternoon.

While the psychological scars are healing with time, the biggest demon of all appears to be the one of unpreparedness for the next natural disaster.

Excerpt:

By Marwaan Macan-Markar and - -
BANGKOK, Nov 16 2011 (IPS)

No guns are needed in this battle. Only the muscle of Thai soldiers defending a sprawling industrial estate on the eastern end of this city from an advancing enemy – flood waters.

Over 400 men in fatigues have been engaged for this mission, to build a wall of sandbag and plastic sheets over two metres high. Other stretches of the Lat Krabang industrial estate have been fortified by empty shipping containers and barrels filled with stones.

“The water is here already,” said Somjet Thinaphong, the former governor of the Industrial Estate Authority of Thailand. “One breach in the wall will make this new embankment useless.”

“We have reached the level we can defend,” he added with an air of resignation as he looked in the direction of the brackish flood waters, nearly a metre high, lapping at this estate of 231 factories. “The situation keeps changing every day.”

Defending the industrial estate from Thailand’s worst floods is important firstly because 50,000 people work and produce global brands such as Johnson and Johnson and Cadbury.

Lal Krabang industrial estate is a vital bridge that links Thailand, one of Southeast Asia’s major manufacturing hubs, with the global market. Its container yards serve nearly half of the four million containers shipped out every month through Bangkok’s major port.

Many of these containers are expected to lie empty in the wake of the havoc caused by the floods. Six of this kingdom’s largest industrial estates, in the provinces of Ayuthaya and Pathum Thani, have been submerged.

Worst affected by the floods, which have claimed 500 lives since late July are Japanese manufacturing companies.

Over 400 Japanese factories are located in the industrial parks north of Bangkok, the manufacturing heartland of this kingdom where nearly 600,000 people have lost their jobs. They include workers on the automobile and information technology production lines.

Carmakers Toyota, Mitsubishi and Honda are among those that have been forced to suspend production, and foreign companies that use Thailand to manufacture hard-disk drives.

The computer world has already been put on notice that there will be shortage of hard disk drives since Thailand accounts for 40 percent of the world’s supplies.

While the full impact of the floods on the Thai economy will be known only after a further three billion cubic metres of water have drained out through Bangkok into the Gulf of Thailand, the country’s central bank has slashed the country’s growth forecast from 4.1 percent to 2.6 percent.

“This significant downward revision reflects the severity and the broad-based impacts of the floods,” Prasarn Trairatvorakul, governor of the Bank of Thailand, told foreign reporters. “(The floods have) brought about a halt in agriculture and manufacturing production in affected areas, and have also disrupted production chains in other areas as well.”

A heavy insurance bill on some 800 companies in affected manufacturing parks, estimated to be 16 billion dollars or higher, awaits payment. “The affected industrial estates will face a severe insurance problem,” Masato Otaka, economic minister at the Japanese embassy in Bangkok, told IPS. “The magnitude is beyond the estates.”

Otaka fears that Thailand may lose its competitive edge as a regional manufacturing base. “International insurers will not provide insurance … not take the risk now that Thailand has become known as a severely flood-prone country.”

Economists question the country’s development model, where industry accounts for 44.7 percent of economic growth. Also brought to relief is the lopsided rise of Bangkok, accounting for 41 percent of the Thai economy, when the country shed its largely agrarian identity to embrace a manufacturing one from the 1970s.

“It is an economy of extremes between Bangkok and the rest of the country,” says Craig Steffensen, head of the Thai office of the Asian Development Bank, the Manila-based financial institution. “Everything has been developed in and around Bangkok, giving it drawing power for investors to set up here than anywhere else.”

Attempts to push foreign investors to other parts of the country since 1985 have “not worked because Bangkok is close to the major airport and ports and has the best schools, best hotels and best shopping,” he explained to IPS. “Maybe the floods will serve as a tipping point for change.”

The current floods, the result of unusually heavy monsoon rains, four storms and mismanagement of two major dams north of Bangkok, have exposed the vulnerability of the Thai economy in a region competing for foreign investment, adds Pavida Pananond, a professor at the business school in the Bangkok-based Thammasat University.

“Thailand may now appear less attractive for investors than before,” she told IPS. “We may pay a price for not placing environmental issues as a priority when trying to attract foreign companies to invest in factories here.”

Excerpt:

By Dennis Engbarth and - -
TOKYO, Nov 10 2011 (IPS)

Seven months after a massive earthquake and tsunami devastated northeastern Japan, Japanese citizens and relief organisations are working to learn from the tragedy in order to mitigate the fatal impact of future natural calamities at home and abroad.

Devastation from the Mar. 11 tsunami swept through Yotukura fishing village. Credit: Suvendrini Kakuchi/IPS

The new ‘Peace Boat Disaster Relief Volunteer Leader Training Programme’ which aims to train about 4,000 Japanese and international volunteers, began its first eight-day session on Nov. 5 in Ishinomaki.

The port suffered the greatest loss of life of any Japanese city from the combined 9.0 magnitude earthquake and massive tsunami which struck on the afternoon of Mar. 11. In all 3,278 persons died and 688 were reported missing in a population of nearly 163,000. A third of the city’s civil service staff were killed in the disaster. Across Japan, nearly 20,000 are confirmed killed or missing.

Ishinomaki has been the focal point for disaster relief support by Japanese and international NGOs. According to a report issued by the organisation in early October, Peace Boat alone had coordinated 6,695 volunteers with 34,388 working days by end-August. “This is the first time civil society organisations have coordinated disaster relief volunteers on this scale in Japan,” Peace Boat International coordinator Takahashi Maho told IPS.

But, Takahashi said, “there were not enough organisations active in training personnel to act in the vital coordinating roles as volunteer leaders who can help manage disaster relief centres, liaise with local governments and other organisations and manage teams of volunteers safely and effectively.

“It took us a couple of weeks to train volunteers – and the first two weeks are crucial in disaster response and relief. We hope to mitigate the damage from the time lost this time by using the lessons and being ready for the next time,” Takahashi told IPS.

The new training programme will include three days of workshops and discussions on natural disasters, field training in the fundamentals of disaster relief volunteer work, basic training in psychological first aid, safety and crisis management and the function and role of volunteer leaders.

Participants will end the course with two days of ‘on the job’ training through managing their own team of volunteers and learning how to react to various possible situations in disaster relief efforts. Graduates will receive certification of training as ‘disaster relief volunteer leaders’ or go on for an advanced course to become ‘certified disaster relief trainers’.

“We hope to both train individual volunteers and share this model with other NGOs, local governments and the national government,” added Takahashi.

The training sessions, two of which will be held each month, will initially only be in Japanese, but Peace Boat aims to offer English language training to international volunteers early next year.

Ishinomaki is being made a model for what civil society can do. Peace Boat president Yamamoto Takashi said when he first arrived on Mar. 17, “I could not believe this was Japan.” Shortages of food, water and fuel persisted until April, he said.

In cooperation with the Ishinomaki City Social Welfare Council, many domestic and international NGOs were able to send thousands of volunteers into the city for the arduous clean-up operation under the umbrella of the Ishinomaki Disaster Relief Assistance Council established by about 30 NGOs and the local authority to coordinate volunteer operations.

Yamamoto said worries that the arrival of volunteers would complicate rescue and relief efforts proved misplaced. “There was a total of about 40,000 short-term and long-term volunteers through here,” Yamamoto said. “We thought it would take nearly two years, but with lots of hard work by volunteers, the clean-up process has gone smoothly.”

By mid-October, remarkable progress had been made in cleaning the city of the hundreds of thousands of tons of mud and debris brought by the earthquake and tsunami. Amid shattered factory buildings, some activity was already returning to the port.

A signal of transition from disaster response to recovery was the closure of shelters on Oct. 13 with the completion of transfer of displaced persons to alternative housing or temporary housing. But Yamamoto cautioned that temporary housing “has its own problems.”

The biggest remains the lack of jobs and transportation. “Ishinomaki’s main industry was fishing, followed by the Nippon Paper Mill and agriculture, but fishing has almost entirely been wiped out,” said Yamamoto.

Takahashi told IPS that the relief needs of the local community have been shifting from the clean-up towards how to restart businesses, cleaning local factories and fishing villages, and preparing for the onslaught of winter.

To help rebuild community in temporary housing, the Peace Boat Relief Group also launched a four page Japanese language weekly ‘Temporary Housing News’ to provide essential information to residents.

Excerpt:

By Suvendrini Kakuchi and - -
TOKYO, Nov 6 2011 (IPS)

Hundreds of Japanese women have been converging on the Japanese capital demanding better relief for some 30,000 children exposed to nuclear radiation by the Fukushima meltdown.

Devastation from the Mar. 11 tsunami that crippled Fukushima. Credit: Suvendrini Kakuchi/IPS

“Our meetings with officials to force faster evacuation programmes for high-risk groups are only met with promises to clear radioactive waste. This is totally irresponsible,” said Smith, who leads the non-government organisation (NGO) Green Action Japan.

Smith criticised the government and the Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO), operator of the crippled Fukushima nuclear plant, for focusing energies on defusing public tension by promising to reduce exposure in affected areas to below one millisieverts (a measure of radiation) per year.

On Wednesday, TEPCO admitted that one of the Fukushima reactors showed presence of radioactive material from a burst of nuclear fission, indicating fresh leakage.

After the meltdown – caused by an earthquake and tsunami on Mar. 11 – the acceptable radiation standard for Fukushima residents was lowered to 20 millisieverts per year, and activists like Smith allege that this was done to minimise the number of evacuees.

Smith said the new standards should, in any case, not have been applied to vulnerable sections such as children and pregnant women.

Some 36,000 people have been evacuated from a 22-km radius of the plant while many more of Fukushima’s two million people may be affected, Smith said.

“We will not give up till the government changes its callous attitude,” vowed Smith, participant in a women’s sit-in and protest before the ministry of economic trade and industry that determines Japan’s nuclear policy.

The core of the protestors was made of about 200 women from Fukushima who sat on a three-day sit-in outside the Tokyo office of Japan’s ministry of economy. When that ended on Oct. 30, they appealed to women from all over Japan to join them for week-long protests until Sunday.

Women from 47 prefectures have collected more than 6,000 signatures to support their demands. They have been handing out fliers to passers-by that contain detailed information on the dangers faced by the residents of Fukushima.

Rika Mashiko, an evacuee from Fukushima, explained that she joined the protests along with her seven-year-old daughter to show solidarity and to express her disappointment with the government. Her husband continues working in Fukushima to maintain financial stability.

Mashiko left her organic farm in Miharumachi, 50 km from the damaged nuclear reactor, six months ago. She resides in Tama, a Tokyo suburb and works part-time to support herself and her daughter.

“I receive no financial support from the government because officially I left voluntarily – though I am a nuclear refugee. I do not trust the newly established standards for radioactive exposure in Fukushima and cannot risk the health of my young child,” she told IPS..

The women have linked post-disaster recovery with achieving stronger protection measures against radiation, transparency and honesty from government officials. They are pushing for a national pledge to end nuclear power generation in Japan.

Ayako Ooga, a representative of the NGO ‘Fukushima Mothers Against Radiation,’ said the success of the government’s recovery programme is under test.

“The way they are going about dealing with the nuclear crisis is not the recovery we envisage,” she said. “The policy is to placate the people, but what we want is honest facts from the government.”

Ooga fled on Mar. 11 from her home that fell within 10 km of the accident site. She explained to IPS that the high levels of radiation being reported from her area made it impossible for her to return.

“We want an assurance that a similar accident will never happen again in Japan and that the government will do more to protect our friends and relatives from radiation,” she said.

The women know they have a long battle ahead. A rude shock came on Nov. 1 when the Kyushu Electric Power Company announced that it would restart a faulty reactor at the Genkai nuclear power station in Saga prefecture, southwestern Japan.

The announcement followed approvals from the government given on the basis that the company had taken sufficient measures after the reactor automatically shut down on Oct. 4, due to procedural errors in repair work.

The plant is at the heart of a scandal following allegations that the utility had manipulated public opinion and pressurised employees to approve restart of the plant.

Hatsumi Ishimaru, a farmer from Genkai who headed a campaign against the restarting of the plant, is among those who have came to Tokyo to join the women’s protest.

Ishimaru, who is party to a lawsuit filed by the locals against the Genkai plant, told IPS that she will not rest until her farming village of 3,000 people is rid of the nuclear power generator.

“Women are, today, at the forefront of the anti-nuclear campaign. We value life more than economic returns,” she said.

Excerpt:

By Marwaan Macan-Markar and - -
BANGKOK, Nov 3 2011 (IPS)

This sinking mega-city’s eight million people are paying the price of ignoring warnings over many years concerning its climate vulnerability and the incapacity of its soggy foundations to handle flooding.

Early morning in submerged Bangkok on Nov. 1, 2011. Credit: Withit Chanthamarit/CC BY 2.0

Only the upper floors of houses, factories and shopping malls are now visible with no sign of the waters receding in the next few weeks.

Anupong Taduon, scratches his head for answers to a deluge that has affected thousands. “The water level has not dropped since the first day,” says the 52-year-old from behind the sandbagged entrance to his karaoke bar. “We may have to live like this for three or four weeks.”

Warnings by the kingdom’s central government and local authorities that the worst is not over are greeted with anger and frustration. It is common knowledge that this tsunami in slow motion must flow through the city before it can drain out into the Gulf of Thailand.

After all, flood management experts have warned that the city – complacent in its economic prosperity visible in the constantly changing skyline – is one of the Southeast Asian capitals most vulnerable to climate change.

“Bangkok is particularly vulnerable when compared with other cities like Manila, Jakarta or Kuala Lumpur,” says Aslam Perwaiz, head of disaster risk management at the Bangkok-based Asian Disaster Preparedness Centre. “The current floods confirm concerns about the need to improve the city’s water management.”

“The record of bad floods in the past show that Bangkok’s water channels are unable to drain inundated streets and neighbourhoods for weeks,” Perwaiz told IPS. “Floods have lasted for nine weeks in this city.”

“Bangkok ranks first in the climate vulnerability ratings of (all provinces) in Thailand,” says Hermina Francisco, director of the Economy and Environment Programme for Southeast Asia, a Singapore-based research group. “The high degree of vulnerability of Bangkok is due largely to high exposure to frequent flooding and sea-level rises.”

“What is probably making the situation even more serious is the claim that Bangkok is sinking,” she told IPS. “(It has been) observed in parts of Bangkok, probably more visible than in other (places), and is something that has been taking place for many years now.”

A reminder of this city’s inability to cope with major flooding was made in February by a team of Dutch water management after surveying Bangkok’s flood defences, pronouncing the flood protection networks inadequate.

“Current flood protection levels for urban areas like Bangkok amount to one percent flooding probability in any given year, which is relatively low by international comparison,” the Netherlands Water Partnership (NWP) noted in a report. “For a large metropolitan area like Bangkok …we anticipated much better flood protection.”

The NWP’s warning was to prove prescient eight months later, with both national and local government officials giving mixed messages and appearing increasingly helpless at saving Bangkok from six billion cubic metres of water bearing down on it in a sheet.

Nearly 400 people have died and some 2.5 million displaced in Bangkok and the provinces to its north since this natural disaster began to unfold following heavy monsoon rains, three tropical storms and a typhoon three months ago.

The city’s much talked about network of canals, which earned it the name “Venice of the East,” has proved inadequate. Most of the 1,650 ‘khlongs,’ as the waterways are known, are either brimming with water or overflowing.

Yet, many of the khlongs, including the 100 navigable ones that helped Bangkok tide over a severe flood in 1940, have been filled in to make way for roads and high-rise buildings and accommodate an economic boom that began in the 1970s.

Recommendations that the canals should not be filled in to accommodate vehicular traffic were ignored, says George Olson, a former corporate manager of a United States engineering firm that had worked on flood protection projects in Bangkok.

That negligence “certainly made all the floods after 1974 much worse for the Bangkok metropolitan area,” said Olson. “The recommendations to build waste water and flood protection tunnels were also met with limited approval.”

Excerpt:

By Marwaan Macan-Markar
BANGKOK, Oct 25 2011 (IPS)

As the Thai Airways flight descends into Suvarnabhumi International Airport, passengers pull out cameras to snap pictures of flood waters rising inexorably and predicted to inundate the capital city by the end of the week.

Headlines in Thai newspapers have been warning of the catastrophe about to hit this megapolis of glass-wrapped skyscrapers. “All of Bangkok will be flooded for a month,” read the headline in one daily on Monday, quoting Plodprasop Suraswadi, Thailand’s outspoken minister of science.

By Oct. 28, this low-lying city of over eight million people will be experiencing its worst flood in decades, inundated by waters descending from the north and high tide in the Gulf of Thailand to the south, say government officials and flood management experts.

Several dikes along the city’s waterways have already been breached by the floods, lending credence to the science minister’s worst fears.

The slow-moving sheet of water flowing southwards across a flood plain is estimated to be 12 billion cu m, according to a report by flood management experts working on simulations to chart the dunking.

Against such volumes, Bangkok’s waterways have the capacity to absorb only 500 million cu m of water daily, according to the Bangkok metropolitan authority.

Bangkok’s bursting network of canals and the Chao Phraya, a major river that flows through the capital, are not equipped to handle this moving lake, estimated to equal the water impounded in the reservoir of the Bhumibol Dam, Thailand’s largest hydropower scheme.

This unfolding disaster began with a major flooding caused by monsoon rains breaking in the north and central parts of the country three months ago. It has already left in its wake a trail of death and destruction, claiming 356 lives and displacing over 2.4 million in 28 provinces, according to United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.

Even before Bangkok – which accounts for 40 percent of the country’s gross domestic product – is hit, the waters have affected tourism and manufacturing, important pillars of the kingdom’s economy.

The manufacturing parks, home to Japanese makers of cars and computers, are among areas where an estimated 14,000 companies have been forced to shut down, throwing over 600,000 workers out of work.

With the domestic Don Muang airport temporarily closed and doubling up as a shelter for displaced people the tourism industry’s target of 19 million visitors for this year, is sure to be affected.

Lamut Maniwan, a victims, had only time to grab a change of clothing before fleeing her home in a community of 1,300 houses north of the capital. “This is the worst flood I have seen,” the 62-year-old said, recalling her ride in a packed military troop carrier to escape water “bursting in from the canal near our home at two in the morning, last Thursday.”

“The ground floor of our house is under water, but in some houses it is even higher,” added this grandmother as she reached for bottles of drinking water being distributed to hundreds hunkered down at Don Muang airport. “We may have to stay here for a month if the floods get worse.”

Excessive rainfall during this year’s monsoon, three tropical storms and a typhoon appear to have conspired to condemn women like Lamut to an uncertain world of internally displaced people.

Man-made factors are also to blame, according to environmentalists who point accusing fingers at “bad water management” by the country’s irrigation department and EGAT, the state-run electricity generating authority.

EGAT delayed releasing water from its two large dams – Bhumibol and Sirikit – located north of the Bangkok flood plains when the monsoon began, argues Montree Chantawong, campaign coordinator for Towards Ecological Recovery and Regional Alliance (TERRA), a Bangkok-based regional green lobby.

“They should have started releasing the water in June since by then the Sirikit dam had filled up after the tropical storm Haina,” Montree told IPS.

Water in the reservoir of the larger Bhumibol had also been impounded till well after the next storm, Nockten, had swept through Thailand in July.

“By September they had no choice but to release the water because both dams had reservoirs with more water than they could hold,” Montree said. “The floods heading towards Bangkok are a combination of the excessive rain and large volumes of water being suddenly released from the dams.”

The average discharge from Bhumibol dam is close to five million cu m of water a day. But currently, EGAT, which owns the dam, has no choice but to release 50 million cu m of water per day.

While the monsoon rains have eased, the area where this 154 m-high dam is located, 480 km north of Bangkok, is a catchment that keeps filling up its reservoir with water flowing in from the surrounding tree-covered, hilly terrain.

Excerpt:

By Suvendrini Kakuchi
TOKYO, Oct 25 2011 (IPS)

In the wake of the massive tsunami that devastated the Tohoku region in March, Japan has witnessed a sharp rise in wood imports for temporary housing units and other recovery projects.

However, conservationists determined to make Japan lumber self-sufficient are pushing ahead with efforts to better manage wood supplies in a country that is two-thirds forest.

Two decades ago Japan topped the list of the world’s largest buyers of wood and affiliated products.

According to Koji Hattori, a representative of the timber trade division at the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry, “Wood imports started declining on an annual basis after the economic recession started affecting local housing construction in the late 1990s.”

Now, Japan is only the fifth largest importer of lumber, thought it continues to procure a full 70 percent of its building materials from overseas.

But recent government reports indicate that plywood imports – mostly from Malaysia and Indonesia – shot up 30 percent soon after the Mar. 11 earthquake and tsunami destroyed coastal villages and towns.

Government statistics indicate that orders for imports surged to over 420,000 cubic metres in April, up almost two-thirds from February 2011.

“Orders for plywood in particular rose spectacularly soon after the March disaster,” Hattori told IPS.

He added, however, that long delays in the arrival of plywood shipments from overseas also boosted demand for domestic lumber by forcing temporary reconstruction projects to rely on local wood, at least initially.

“Now we have a glut of plywood in the country. As a result, prices have plunged to about one dollar per cubic metre,” he explained.

Prof. Naoto Ando, forestry expert at the University of Tokyo, told IPS that Japan’s rampant wood exports in the early 1980s led to a scarcity of supply in the region and thus a dramatic increase in prices.

But new export sources such as Australia, China and the United States have pushed prices down again, as Japan’s local timber manufacturers struggle against foreign competition.

“Japanese wood prices have fallen dramatically in order to compete with cheaper imports,” Ando said. “The domestic industry is no longer lucrative and is unable to absorb the local labour force.”

For ecologists, the recovery-fuelled increase in plywood imports is an illustrative example of Japan’s mismanaged forests.

“Japan’s vast forest cover can not only make the country self-reliant in wood but also make it a major wood exporter, if we ensure better management of the local timber industry,” Ando stressed.

Meanwhile, green activists are deploying the ‘Furusato’ concept of sustainable community development through economic resilience in an effort to protect Japan’s forests while simultaneously reducing imports.

At a recent international conference on biodiversity rehabilitation and sustainable development led by the Organisation for Industrial, Spiritual and Cultural Advancement (OISCA), participants identified Furusato ecology as an important contribution to the principles of the 1992 Rio de Janeiro Declaration on Environment and Development.

A noteworthy example of the viability of Furusato is Tabayama, a small village west of Tokyo that is surrounded by mountains of pristine cedar and pine trees.

Japan’s rapid economic growth post-World War II dealt a blow to Tabayama’s local timber industry when cheaper wood from Southeast Asian countries flooded the local market.

Traditional woodcutting families lost their livelihoods and were forced to flee the village, leaving behind overgrown forests and a shrinking population of just 700 inhabitants, Mayor Masayuki Okabe told IPS.

“We became severely dependent on government subsidies for our economic survival,” he said.

But the past few years have seen crucial changes. According to Okabe, “Tabayama’s Furusato project has rekindled the village’s forests through new programmes founded on a people-centered development model.”

The region now represents a major opportunity for reviving the local economy.

For example Tabayama has now become a huge tourist attraction, drawing urbanites from Tokyo into its unique ‘rest haven’.

Not only does this kind of ecotourism bring in much needed finances, it also benefits the forest industry by facilitating participatory activities for tourists, such as cleaning the mountain undergrowth and building pathways.

The Furusato effort recently received a generous injection of funds for a five-year period from the corporate social responsibility (CSR) kitties of two leading Japanese companies, Tokyu Hotel Corp and Summit Supermarket.

These CSR funds are handed directly to the village administration, which then distributes them to local projects run by small unions or NGOs. Such efforts have both stabilised and revitalised the Tabayama local economy by enabling replanting of forests and protecting the rich biodiversity of the region.

Another sustainable venture, spearheaded by the Juon Network, aims to increase production of wooden chopsticks made from Japanese lumber.

Currently Japan produces just 20 percent of its chopstick needs. China has hitherto filled the gap in supply but has been threatening to decrease exports to protect its own forests.

Takayuki Kasumi, founder of the Juon Network, told IPS that his organisation currently manufactures about 10 million pairs annually using local lumber bought directly from forest companies and unions.

“We are promoting the use of local wood for chopsticks. Our supplies are purchased directly from worker cooperatives, wood factories or Japanese forest management companies.”

“Although our chopsticks cost almost triple the amount of Chinese imports, our message is growing more popular,” he explained.

Kasumi founded Juon Network after the earthquake, when ecologically conscious companies began building temporary housing using local wood.

“Such efforts convinced me that we no longer need to depend on foreign imports if we change our attitudes. Tohoku must follow the many examples of ecological sustainability,” he said.

Excerpt:

By Sudeshna Sarkar
KATHMANDU, Sep 20 2011 (IPS)

Though Nepal was relatively unscathed by the earthquake that wreaked havoc in the adjacent areas of India this week, it showed up this Himalayan country’s inadequate disaster preparedness.

“The impact of Sunday’s earthquake was relatively low,” says Amod Mani Dixit, executive director at the National Society for Earthquake Technology-Nepal. “Though 6.8 on the Richter scale, it measured about 5 on the Modified Mercalli Scale (that measures the intensity) in Kathmandu. But what if a bigger one comes along?”

Dixit has in mind the historical temblor on the Indo-Nepal border in 1934 that killed over 8,000 people in Nepal alone and destroyed more than 80,000 buildings. Fifteen other major quakes have rattled Nepal since 1223 with the last one, occurring in 1988, destroying nearly 65,000 buildings and killing at least 700.

In comparison, Sunday’s quake has an official toll of six deaths, though other reports say that nearly a dozen people died. Prime Minister Baburam Bhattarai called an emergency meeting of the cabinet soon after the quake, and security forces swung into action to rescue those trapped under the debris of collapsed buildings.

But, Nepal still needs to massively scale up its disaster preparedness to cope with a killer quake.

While India has a National Disaster Response Force comprising 10 battalions, with about 1,000 trained personnel per battalion, Nepal has no such force dedicated to combating disasters.

India deployed about 5,000 army troops to help deal with the aftermath of Sunday’s temblor, which claimed at least 50 lives and left thousands stranded in the worst affected eastern Himalayan state of Sikkim.

In Nepal, Dixit estimates there are about 600 trained personnel at the mid-level and another 1,000 – 2,000 at a basic level for providing medical first response, collapsed structure search and rescue, and light search and rescue.

But to cope with a really severe tremor, there should be at least 2,500 mid-level trained rescuers for the rural areas and 1,500 for the urban areas. In addition, Nepal also needs a major taskforce of at least 80,000 community volunteers to fan out to the nearly 4,000 village development committee areas.

The biggest danger during a killer quake, Dixit warns, will come from Nepal’s buildings, almost 93 percent of which are non-engineered and informally constructed in the traditional manner without any or little intervention by qualified architects and engineers.

“You can imagine the vulnerability of these buildings, their resistance to earthquakes,” he says.

In the worst-case scenario, he assesses that 60 percent of the buildings in Kathmandu will be damaged beyond repair, which is also likely to be the case in the rest of Nepal.

“We have an excellent building code but we have not had much success in implementing it,” he says. “Perhaps about five of the 100-odd municipalities follow them, like Kathmandu and Dharan.”

A major tremor will also hit other critical infrastructure like hospitals, airports, telecom, drinking water supplies, bridges and roads.

“These will function only at 50 percent of their capacity in a worst-case scenario,” Dixit estimates.

A key factor in battling the next earthquake or any other disaster will be state policies and leadership.

While international donors are ready to help a developing country like Nepal cope with crises, an acute political instability continuing for nearly a decade has hampered a succession of governments from taking advantage of the offers fully.

Though the government approved of a National Strategy for Disaster Risk Management in 2009 and the cabinet approved a Bill for a new Disaster Management Act the same year, it is yet to be approved by the parliament.

“That is definitely impairing our progress,” U.N. resident and humanitarian coordinator Robert Piper told the media.

Piper says “emergency actors” like the U.N. agencies, and “long-term development actors” like the World Bank and Asian Development Bank, the governments of the U.S., Britain and Australia, and the European Commission have built “a strong international collaboration to help Nepal prepare for and deal with risk.”

The new Nepal Risk Reduction Consortium has already drawn up a work plan but is hampered from putting it into action due to the absence of a National Disaster Management Authority that will be formed once the shelved Bill becomes an Act.

From 2007-2010, the Japanese government funded a natural disaster reduction programme, seeking to minimise the impact of potential earthquakes on seismically vulnerable communities in five municipalities in Nepal.

It was part of a five-country regional programme in South Asia with the goal of supporting regional cooperation through knowledge sharing and development of best practices. The other four countries were Bhutan, Bangladesh, India and Pakistan.

Political friction has come in the way of effective regional cooperation even though the eight South Asian states – Nepal, India, Bangladesh, Bhutan, the Maldives, Sri Lanka, Pakistan and Afghanistan – are formally part of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC).

SAARC is yet to show a united face to disasters though the 13th SAARC summit of the heads of states of the member countries agreed in 2005 that mutual cooperation was a must for effective disaster preparedness. In the following year, the SAARC comprehensive framework on disaster management was articulated.

At home, Nepal needs large-scale awareness programmes to change the mindsets of both its leaders and people.

Images of the reaction to Sunday’s quake, broadcast by the local TV stations, showed pandemonium in parliament as lawmakers rushed out pell-mell once the tremors began. Panic-stricken people jumped out of windows suffering fractures and other injuries.

“If an eighth grader in California can behave calmly during an earthquake, why not a grownup person in Nepal?” asks Dixit. “In our schools we teach what earthquakes are and what causes them. But how to survive them and what to do during an earthquake is not included in the curriculum. We have islands of success, but we need is to upscale everything.”

Excerpt:

By Zofeen Ebrahim
BADIN, Sindh , Sep 19 2011 (IPS)

With just the clothes on their backs, Moora Sanafdhano, 68, and his family of nine waded through waist-deep flood waters swirling through their village of Allah Ditto Leghari, saving themselves in the nick of time.

Their homes and rice paddies submerged by flood waters these Hindu Bheels await government relief in shelters set up on the main road. Credit: Zofeen Ebrahim/IPS

They are being turned out of makeshift camps set up in schools, and relief material sent to them hijacked by people who know that low-caste Hindus are so abject that they would not dare retaliate.

Sanafdhano’s village is about 80 to 90 km from Badin town in Sindh province, and about 200 km from the provincial capital and port city of Karachi.

It is populated predominantly by low-caste Hindus – officially known as scheduled castes – such as Kohlis, Meghwars, Jogis and the Bheels, most of whom are sharecroppers for wealthy Muslim landlords.

The system of land tenure is so heavily weighted in favour of the landlords that these poor farmers and their families are as good as bonded labour. Sanafdhano says he owes his landlord about Pakistani rupees 50,000 (570 dollars) and is helpless in the face of a catastrophe such as the present floods.

“I’d grown rice on five acres of land and the standing paddy is all but gone,” says Sanafdhano. Estimates by the Sindh-Balochistan Rice Mills Association say the floods have damaged 20 – 25 percent of paddy crops in Sindh.

According to Pakistan’s National Disaster Management Authority a severe drought followed by abnormally heavy monsoon rains in August and September have severely affected seven of Sindh province’s 23 districts and disrupted life in 11 more.

The death toll now stands at 342 with some 1.2 million homes and 1.7 million acres of arable land destroyed.

The worst affected district of Badin has a population of 1.8 million people of whom 1.6 million have directly been affected by the floods. About 20 percent of the affected are low-caste Hindus.

Pakistan has three million Hindus and 2.5 million of them are from the scheduled castes, the upper castes having fled to India after the 1947 partition when British India was carved up along religious lines.

Some 6,000 villages in Badin have been wiped out by the floods and according to National Assembly speaker, Fehmida Mirza, who belongs to the area, there is no high ground left to set up rescue camps.

Officials deny that the Hindus are being discriminated against in the matter of relief. “Catastrophes see no caste, creed or religion,” says Dadlo Zuhrani, deputy district officer in Badin. “Relief activities are area specific, not community specific, and I protest against charges that we are discriminating against certain communities.”

But on the ground, for people like Sanafdhano, relief from the government and from aid agencies have passed them by. Unwritten caste rules prevent relief from reaching those who need it most.

“Those from the Hindu faith will never drink from the same well or vessel. They will also never eat from the same plate,” says Jewat Ram, a local schoolteacher. “Hindu masons may build a mosque, but never enter it, and Muslims who attend a Hindu wedding will not partake of food there. This is accepted, though the practice is slowly changing.”

But, Ram saw something in the camps which left him disturbed. “The school I teach in has been turned into a camp for the flood-affected people, but when three Hindu families from the Kohli caste sought refuge there, they were denied it.

“When the Kohli families insisted on staying, one of the men from the displaced Muslim community began contemptuously urinating in full view of the Kohli women and they had little choice but to leave,” said Ram.

“They treat dogs better than they treat us human beings,” said Ram in anger and helplessness.

Moolchand Sakromal, a Hindu government official who tried to give refuge to the Kohlis, says low-caste Hindus are probably the “most neglected” of Pakistan’s minorities.

“It’s a double whammy for them – they are poor and then they belong to the scheduled caste,” says Vikio Rajwani, a Hindu and head master at the government primary school.

The district administration in Badin has set up 278 camps in public schools and other government buildings, providing relief to 81,000 displaced people, but nothing has been assigned for the Hindus. Most of the displaced people from the scheduled castes are camping wherever they can on the roadside in makeshift tents, fending for themselves.

Even charities have shown a preference for giving handouts to displaced Muslims, rather than Hindus.

Donations of material made to Hindus do not reach them. A week ago the Pakistan Fisherfolk Forum (PFF), a non-governmental organisation, sent two truckloads of relief goods for 200 Hindu families in a camp set up in Golarchi (another town in Badin district), but it was hijacked by Muslims.

“When the truck reached our compound, some 20 armed men surrounded the trucks and began looting. Soon the police came and the PFF men were told by the police superintendent to leave,” said Shanker Das, a Hindu lawyer, who was present.

“Protests were made to the district coordination officer but even he couldn’t do much. All he did was to call up his deputy and order him to send rations, but in the end they were told point blank that there was nothing for them.”

Jabbar Habibiani, a politician associated with the newly formed Awami Jamhoori Party, says there is massive corruption in the distribution of relief with political affiliation given priority over actual need.

Officials deny widespread charges of inefficiency. “It is impossible to satisfy a man with a week’s rations for his family when he has lost his life’s savings; we are doing our best but our resources are limited,” said administrator Zuhrani.

In the midst of such chaos, the low-caste Hindu communities remain invisible. They have no representation in the local government. Even their votes are cast on their behalf by their landlords.

Excerpt:

By Suvendrini Kakuchi
TOKYO, Aug 4 2011 (IPS)

Matashichi Oishi, 78, a radiation victim from Bikini Atoll, the site of a U.S. hydrogen bomb test in 1954, will make his annual lone visit this week to commemorate the Aug. 6 anniversary of the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima 66 years ago.

This year, says the former sailor, battling lung cancer from exposure to high levels of radiation at Bikini Atoll, his message at Hiroshima will go beyond a routine call to end nuclear weapons.

“Against the backdrop of the disastrous Fukushima nuclear plant accident, I will speak of the absolute need for Japan to not only work to ban nuclear weapons but also to completely eradicate dependence on nuclear energy,” he told IPS.

Oishi’s planned speech echoes the emergence of nuclear energy as an equal threat to peace. It gains credence from the massive earthquake and tsunami that hit Fukushima and the northeast coasts of Japan on Mar. 11, severely damaging the nuclear plant located there.

Hiroshima became the world’s first atom-bombed city when the United Stated dropped a uranium bomb that exploded and killed almost its entire population instantly in 1945.

The atomic bombing anniversary has long made Hiroshima and Nagasaki city, that was similarly devastated within three days, potent symbols of world peace. The cities are unrivalled leaders in the nuclear disarmament movement.

Like Oishi, the thousands of peace activists, officials and politicians who will rally at Hiroshima to declare their commitment towards a world without nuclear weapons, will also call for a ban on nuclear energy.

A press release by the Mayor of Hiroshima, Kazumi Matsui and his Nagasaki counterpart, Tomihisa Taue, makes the agenda clear.

Drafts of their speeches, released to the media, refer to the catastrophe faced by the people in Fukushima, and appeal to the government to promote renewable energy sources.

Matsui is quoted in the Japanese press as saying: “The central government should take responsibility to deal with the nuclear power generation issue.”

Indeed, Oishi points out that a ban on nuclear power has been his lonely cry for the last six decades. He was 19 years old and sailing on a tuna boat when the U.S. carried out the bomb test that radiated his crew and forced the massive evacuation of residents from the surrounding islands.

The incident created an uproar in Japan, but given the political sensitivity at that time – the Cold War and a race to develop nuclear weapons development between the former Soviet Union and the U.S. – Oishi and his colleagues were forced to abandon the pursuit of justice.

Fourteen of the 23 Japanese crew on board the ‘Lucky Dragon’ contracted cancer, and ten died of it.

For Ayako Ooga, who lives in a temporary shelter in Aizu, 150 km from the damaged reactors in Fukushima, her former home, the upcoming Hiroshima anniversary is a time for solidarity.

“We must join hands with other victims like Oishi because we ourselves have become radiation victims,” she said.

Prof. Michiji Konuma, who heads the Japan-based World Peace Appeal group, explained that the Fukushima disaster has reinforced the importance of raising public awareness about the dark side of nuclear energy.

Konuma, a physicist, has long campaigned to highlight the risks to human health posed by radiation. To him, the sobering lesson of Fukushima is that it is the fourth nuclear disaster to hit the Japanese people, counting Bikini Island, Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

“The human tragedy of the past disaster that included fatalities, cancer and other radiation induced diseases, as well as the widespread discrimination faced by the survivors, illustrate the hidden and lingering problems of nuclear power,” he said.

“We must sustain the awareness raised by Fukushima and speak out about the dangers we face if we continue to pursue nuclear energy,” he added.

Konuma represents a panel of intellectuals in Japan that issued a notice to the government in July, calling for a shift away from dependence on nuclear energy.

The group is also spearheading a public movement to bring in a long-needed debate on the safety aspects of nuclear power in Japan with the aim of creating deeper understanding at the citizen level.

“The difficult aspect of sustaining an anti-nuclear energy public mood can only be met if more stakeholders – from intellectuals to radiation victims – get together. We must not repeat the mistake of forgetting again,” he said.

Oishi agrees. “My own story shows how lonely the struggle is in Japan to get the authorities to listen to victims who stay silent for fear of being discriminated against,” he said.

Excerpt:

By Zofeen Ebrahim
KARACHI, Jul 27 2011 (IPS)

Subhan Khatoon’s brand new home is nothing like the one that got washed away, along with all her worldly goods, in the 2010 monsoon floods that submerged a fifth of Pakistan and left 2,000 people dead.

Villagers in Khairpur district, Sindh, are discovering the joys of green construction using local materials. Credit: Heritage Foundation

Khatun was lucky that the district administration of Khairpur identified her village Darya Khan Sheikh, on the banks of the Indus in Sindh province, as one of the worst affected, and her house as one that had been completely destroyed and, therefore, merited replacement.

Paperwork over, architects and engineers from the voluntary Heritage Foundation (HF) began designing Khatoon’s new home using locally available materials under its ‘Green Karavan Ghar’ initiative, which runs a similar rehabilitation project in the Swat district of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.

The vision behind the HF initiative is the use of local materials and a workforce backed by students from schools of architecture and engineering.

Established in 1984 by Yasmeen Lari – incidentally Pakistan’s first woman architect – the HF basically documents historic buildings and works for their conservation, but came forward to help with post-disaster reconstruction.

“These young professionals must learn to respect the traditional ways of building and also get hands-on training both technical and humanitarian in nature,” Lari told IPS.

They have already handed over 104 homes in two villages in Sindh, all built with bamboo, lime (as opposed to cement) and mud. Not only can these be made speedily, they are cost-effective at Pakistani Rs 55,000 (647 US dollars) and have a low carbon footprint.

“We showed everyone in the housing business that you can make a home without wood, cement or steel,” says Lari, adding that the production of steel and cement is highly consumptive of energy.

Khatoon, who cannot shake off memories of being rescued in a boat along with 500 other people, worries that that her new house too may end up getting swept away by the next major flood.

Her fears are not unfounded. Climate change experts predict an increase in the frequency of floods as even minor changes in temperatures can have huge impacts on the environment and food security, as the 2010 floods demonstrated.

But Naeem Shah, head of the project, assures Khatoon that her new house will last a good 20 years. “Even if the waters flood the area, the walls of your home will remain intact, only the plaster will come off, but you can always apply a new coat.”

Shah gains his confidence from having worked in making structurally sound and eco-friendly housing since the massive earthquake of 2005 that rocked northern Pakistan.

“The homes that we built in Swat using the same materials have withstood three feet of snow and excessive rains, so there is every likelihood that these can resist the weather in Sindh.”

Bamboo, the basic material used for the homes, is “fast growing, extremely strong and environmentally sustainable,” says Shah. Local stone is used for foundations and cross bracing infill and different mixes of mud and lime for mortar and plaster.

“We were pleasantly surprised by the insulation provided by mud and lime,” says Lari, adding that by using indigenous material “the locals develop an instant comfort level as they know how to use it even after you leave”.

Best of all is the ease and speed with which the new homes can be constructed. “It takes about eight days for a house to be completed by a team of four skilled people and four labourers,” says Shah

That is fast considering that for six months after the floods, the 56 families of Darya Shah Khan camped out in the open, dependent on hand-outs.

Many in the village say the deluge has come as a boon for them. The use of local material and workforce has resulted in economic regeneration.

A neighbouring village, where reed panels are made, has become the supplier of the prefabricated roof panels while such items as bathroom screens made from date palms, come from another nearby village.

“All this would not have been possible had we used concrete blocks and galvanized iron sheets to make walls and roofs,” says Shah.

Along with providing clean, structurally sound homes, HF has brought about a gradual change in the lifestyles of the villagers, nudging them towards cleaner, greener living.

This was possible because HF sought the help of architecture students who worked dedicatedly alongside the villagers.

“In the evenings, these students would pick up issues identified by the villagers and, through short skits and discussions, try to bring about awareness on such things as hand-washing,” said Shah.

“No longer will you have to watch your step for fear of stepping on animal dung as you make your way around the village,” points out Shah. The villagers have seen the wisdom of corralling their livestock in a common area instead keeping them next to their homes.

“The place was littered with not just dung. There was rotting fish all over the place. So we introduced them to the simplest and oldest known preservation method – low-cost salting and sun drying,” Shah said.

But if you ask the village women, what is the best thing that has happened to them after the floods, they all point to the women’s centre, a hexagonal structure on stilts.

“We never had a place of our own and we never got together the way we do now,” says Shahun Bibi, 30. “Here we listen to each other’s problems and try and find solutions to them.”

Excerpt:

By Suvendrini Kakuchi
TOKYO, Jul 12 2011 (IPS)

In a matter of minutes on Mar. 11, 33-year-old Hiroshi Yoshida became a widower and a single father, as the massive tsunami swept over his home in Rikuzentakata in northern Japan and took away his wife and younger son.

Four months later, Yoshida is still adjusting to his new life, and struggling to work while at the same time looking after his eldest son, who is nine years old. A month ago, they finally moved to a temporary home and began to start life again.

“I am uneasy with my new role as a single father, and I miss my wife who took care of everything,” Yoshida told IPS.

Hundreds of Japanese families like Yoshida’s lost fathers or mothers – who died or went missing – in the aftermath of the earthquake and tsunami that hit northeastern Japan. Now, the country is tackling the enormous task of post-disaster recovery, including the rehabilitation of these families.

Advocates say the plight of Japan’s single-father households, or “fushi-katei” in Japanese, is now finally gaining long-needed attention in a society where the gender divide has traditionally focused on single mothers.

“Many families were left without mothers, who died during the Tohoku disaster. Suddenly fathers are left to deal with a situation that has, up to now, mostly focused on support for households headed by mothers,” explained Tomoyuki Katayama, spokesperson for Single Father Japan.

Katayama says the men are usually resigned to lead a harsh and lonely life in a country where gender roles are distinct – mothers were supposed to look after the children, leaving fathers to be the main breadwinner.

“So when men lose their wives or decide to care for their families alone, society is not too sympathetic towards them,” Katayama said.

Indeed, Yoshida, who had lived a serenely happy life till the disaster turned his life upside down so brutally, says he is now working hard to create a social space that understands single fathers like himself.

“For a start, there are no clear figures from the Tohoku area about the number of families who have lost their mothers,” he said. “Once I manage to find this information, I will be organising a group of men who must look after their children alone, so we can help each other deal with issues together and also lobby for better official support.”

According to Yoshida, an initial survey in Tohoku turned up nine families who face the same future as himself. Some of those polled talked about the continuing but hidden despair, the lack of domestic help to juggle raising their children and keeping their jobs, and also the nagging insecurity from unemployment as a result of the disaster.

“Luckily, I have my own small business which makes it easier to maintain my income which a lot of single fathers cannot do because the disaster has caused many businesses to close down in the Tohoku area,” Yoshida said.

Last month, Single Father Japan, the first organisation set up in November 2009 by a group of men looking after their children alone, visited the Ministry of Health and Welfare to request for the extension of bereavement pensions for men who lost their wives during the Tohoku disaster.

“The allowance,” said Katayama, “is extended to single mothers and therefore must be extended to fathers as well.”

An official from the Ministry explained to IPS that Japanese family laws have focused on supporting single-women headed households on the basis that mothers are best at nurturing young children.

“Financial support has been extended to women because female employment rates and salaries are usually lower in comparison to men,” said the official who preferred not to be named.

But, the official pointed out, with high unemployment rates even among men, child allowances have been extended to households headed by single fathers since 2009. According to official figures there are currently more than 1.2 million households headed by single women, with half that number recorded for their male counterparts.

Katayama’s group is responsible for such change, having put pressure on the government to recognise households headed by single fathers. Katayama, who is himself a divorced father of two, says he left a regular job that demanded long hours of work.

“I just could not leave my children alone all the time. So I had to forgo a steady income in the end and live off two part-time jobs to make ends meet,” he explained.

The group he heads meets regularly to exchange information on getting more official help but also to boost their confidence which he says is crucial in Japanese society that looks down on fathers who prefer to stay at home rather than devote their lives to the company.

“It is time to define the role of fatherhood in Japan from the traditional gender divide. More men want to move away from that pressure to be the main breadwinner. Child and single family allowances must reflect the aspirations of men as individuals,” he said.

Excerpt:

By Ranjit Devraj
NEW DELHI, Mar 14 2011 (IPS)

Anti-nuclear campaigners in India see the earthquake that hit Japan last week, which threatens the meltdown of the Fukushima atomic power facility there, as a wakeup call for this country’s ambitious nuclear power programme.

When India completed a nuclear power cooperation deal with the United States in October 2008, it threw open a 270 billion U.S. dollar market for nuclear reactors. Now members of the 45-nation Nuclear Suppliers’ Group are queuing up for contracts.

The biggest of these contracts was signed in December 2010 with French state- owned manufacturer Areva. The contracted 9,900-megawatt nuclear power park, the world’s largest, ran into public resistance over its location in Jaitapur-Madban, in the Konkan area of western Maharashtra state.

“Apart from our opposition to nuclear power we object to the selection of the site on the Konkan coast which falls in a known seismic belt,” Laxminarayan Ramdas, one of the leaders of the Coalition for Nuclear Disarmament and Peace, told IPS.

“The unfortunate events in Japan and the possibility of a meltdown at the Fukushima nuclear power plant should serve as a wakeup call for the proponents of nuclear energy in this country,” said Ramdas.

Jaitapur, on the Konkan coast, falls in the “high damage risk zone” in the official earthquake hazard map of India.

Over the past 20 years there have been three earthquakes in Jaitapur exceeding five points on the Richter scale, and the worst of them in 1993 – measuring 6.3 on the Richter scale – left 9,000 people dead in the Konkan region.

“The Konkan is one of the world’s hottest biodiversity hotspots and a nuclear accident could result in extensive and long-term damage from radioactivity,” Ramdas said.

Ramdas, who served as India’s naval chief (1990 – 1993) and won the 2004 Ramon Magsaysay Award for Peace and International Understanding for his efforts at building peace between Pakistan and India, has been barred from entering Jaitapur by the Maharashtra government.

“The government is promoting an exorbitantly expensive reactor design [European Pressurised Reactor or EPR] which has not been cleared by the nuclear regulatory authority of any country, including France,” Ramdas said. “We don’t know who they are trying to please.”

The world’s first EPR reactor, under construction in Olkiluoto, Finland, is mired in litigation with Finnish, French, British and U.S. nuclear regulators who have raised a slew of serious safety issues.

India’s public sector Nuclear Power Corporation of India Ltd. (NPCIL) has so far signed nuclear cooperation agreements for the supply of equipment or fuel with the U.S., Russia, France, Britain, Canada, Argentina, Kazakhstan, Mongolia and Namibia – and has plans to set up ten nuclear energy parks.

But, plans to set up nuclear energy parks in Kudankulam, in southern Tamil Nadu, Mithi Virdi in western Gujarat, Kovvada in Andhra Pradesh, and Haripur in West Bengal have run into protests by local farmers’ or fishermen’s groups.

The loudest of the protests has been coming from Kudankulam where a 9,200-megawatt power plant is fast coming up with Russian VVER (water- cooled, water-moderated energy reactor) technology, popular in the former Soviet bloc countries.

S.P. Udayakumar, who leads the influential National Alliance of Anti-nuclear Movements, and is based in Nagercoil city in Tamil Nadu, told IPS that what happened at Fukushima could happen anywhere in the world regardless of precautions.

“There are serious lessons here for India, just as the world is preparing for the 25th anniversary of the deadly nuclear power plant accident at Chernobyl on Apr. 26,” stressed Udayakumar. “But the Indian nuclear establishment is in denial mode.”

“After the December 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami damaged the Kalpakkam nuclear facility [also in Tamil Nadu] and caused several deaths there, India’s Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) busied itself with assurances that India’s nuclear power plants were safe,” said Udayakumar.

While the reactors of the Madras Atomic Power Plant (MAPP) at Kalpakkam escaped damage, DAE officials admitted that they were not constructed with the possibility of a tsunami, of a type that killed 225,000 people in 11 countries, in mind.

“After Fukushima Daiichi, the Indian public must sit up and assert itself on the dangerous nuclear power programme that the Indian government and the nuclear establishment are foisting on the people,” Udayakumar said. “So far, this has been marked by lack of transparency, unaccountability, forcible land acquisitions and police repression.”

Indian experts and officials continue to insist that the 20 functional nuclear power plants scattered all over the country are safe. On Sunday, the NPCIL released a statement saying that the event in Japan was being reviewed. “Resulting out of such review, any reinforcement as needed would be implemented,” the statement said.

NPCIL also said: “After the severe [7.6 on the Richter] earthquake of Gujarat, Bhuj on Jan. 26, 2001, the Kakrapar atomic power station continued to operate safely. Similarly, during the tsunami event in 2004, MAPP was safely shut down without any radiological consequences.”

“Generally speaking, India’s nuclear plants are built to withstand earthquakes,” says Vinod Menon, an international consultant who, until last year, was a prominent member of the National Disaster Management Authority.

But Menon admits that there are many imponderables such as the actual intensity of a temblor or just how close the epicentre of a seismic event is to the surface of the earth.

“Going by what we know the densely populated Ganges and Brahmaputra valleys that lie below the Himalayas – a vast, 2,900 kilometre mountain chain – are prone to strong earthquakes, and special precautions need to be taken for any major construction in that belt,” Menon told IPS.

Excerpt:

By Suvendrini Kakuchi
TOKYO, Mar 12 2011 (IPS)

Heightened tension on Saturday after a blast at a nuclear facility in Fukushima, 150 kilometres north of Tokyo, eased off after the government reported that the danger had been overstated.

But anti-nuclear experts continued to express concern. “There are many areas that remain unclear in the government’s explanation, which is why we cannot accept that the coast is clear,” Professor Hiroaki Koiwa from the Research Reactor Institute at the national Kyoto University told IPS.

Television footage Saturday afternoon showed a badly scarred Fukushima Number 1 nuclear power plant with white smoke plumes coming out of the building. The ceiling and walls were damaged. The building is a part of four reactors that account for 18 percent of Japan’s nuclear power capacity.

The 8.8 magnitude earthquake on Friday forced the automatic closedown of the nuclear power plant, leading to the build-up of radioactive hydrogen inside the turbine building.

The Tokyo Electric Power Company ( TEPCO) which owns the nuclear plant had to release a large amount of hydrogen pressure in the face of reports of a possible core meltdown in the building.

Japanese media quoting experts pointed to widespread radiation contamination if there would be a core meltdown in the plant. People in the area were advised to wear masks.

But TEPCO and the Japan Nuclear Safety Commission reported that earlier estimates of radioactivity of around 1,000 times the normal level had been overstated.

Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano told media that TEPCO had successfully been able to release hydrogen pressure that had been building in the concrete containment structure, normally about 1.2 metres thick.

“After the release of the hydrogen, TEPCO reported that the radiation level has dropped to 75 siebel units, which is not dangerous to people,” he said. Internationally accepted human limits for tolerating radiation are set at 1000 siebel units annually.

But Koike points out that if TEPCO released the hydrogen pressure using a power supply system to work the pump, what did the company then mean when it reported the shutdown of the facility following the earthquake.

Researchers also question the legitimacy of the latest radioactivity leakage figures stated by TEPCO, pointing out that wind direction plays a key role in setting standards.

Hideki Ban, a leading anti-nuclear power activist and head of the Citizen’s Nuclear Information Centre, said at a press conference Saturday evening that the shocking damage to the Fukushima nuclear power plant points to the need for continued careful monitoring for radioactive leaks, despite government and TEPCO attempts at defusing tension.

“The Fukushima plant explosion symbolises the terrible threat to human safety in Japan that is highly vulnerable to earthquakes. This is another opportunity to stop this dangerous nuclear power build-up,” he told media.

With some press reports hinting at widespread leaks reaching as far as Tokyo, the public have been shopping hard for basic food items, leading many supermarkets to report bare shelves.

Ban contends hydrogen pressure is rising in the turbine building and the key to containing a major radiation leak is now in the hands of TEPCO that must work hard to release the pressure.

Anti-nuclear power activists also stress that the Fukushima plant was built in the 1970s, and does not contain the superior modern safety standards of today.

One-third of power in Japan is nuclear. Key nuclear reactors are located in seismic areas. Accidents have plagued the plants over the last decade, leading to deaths among workers and several evacuations.

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By Suvendrini Kakuchi
TOKYO, Mar 12 2011 (IPS)

Fears of a nuclear meltdown at one of Japan’s nuclear installations have gripped the country following a blast at a nuclear installation. Emergency teams were struggling to limit damage following the explosion.

The blast was heard at at the Daiichi facility at Fukushima, 150 miles north of Tokyo. The government had placed the facility under a state of emergency. Crisis efforts are under way at urgent pace to cool down an overheating reactor.

Radioactivity has been detected outside the plat and thousands evacuated from the area.

Japan’s reputation as a world leader in disaster management is facing a crucial test as the country scrambles to deal with the massive destruction caused by the strong earthquake on Friday that has left mounting deaths in the densely populated northeast.

Responding quickly and with accurate information is key to stemming the ballooning of the crisis that can grow with rumours and panic, experts here say.

Professor Tokiyoshi Yamada, speaking on Japan’s national broadcasting channel said rescue and evacuation strategies have now begun following the disaster management programme that is based on carefully analyzed data that identifies the needs and damage in the affected areas.

“Each village and locality have their own distinct issues, neighbours, destruction and evacuation needs. The first step is to assess the damage based on as much information as we can and then just surge ahead,” he explained.

For now, experts are searching for survivors, a task that is an enormous feat as many of the affected people in rural areas are aged and live alone. Because the tsunami has isolated whole villages by washing away roads, access is also proving a heavy challenge.

Television showed a hospital on the coast of Iwate prefecture, one of worst affected in the northeast, completely cut off from the rest of the vicinity. Rescue helicopters had still not reached the building which had SOS in huge white lettering on its roof top.

Long lines of people waited for food and water. A woman from Iwate said she had been standing for three hours for food and water but was satisfied her needs are being met.

A woman in her sixties described her escape as a “miracle”. “When the tsunami warning came I just grabbed a back-pack and ran to a tall building and walked up several flights of stairs. I was so frightened but glad I am safe,” she said.

Tens of thousands of people have been evacuated. Whole villages have been swept away by a continuous tsunami that has been as high as 10 metres at places. Cars, fishing boats and even whole villages have been washed away.

The earthquake measured 8.8 on the Japanese seismic scale and is the worst in a century. Japan is one of the world’s most vulnerable countries for earthquakes. Experts say this one was caused by the movement of 500 kilometres of tectonic plates buried deep in the ocean.

More than 6,000 people died in the 1995 Kobe earthquake. The death toll from this earthquake is expected to be in the thousands too.

Led by Prime Minister Naoto Kan and his cabinet members, all of whom have donned working blue uniforms that symbolize the grave work ahead, more than 50,000 Self Defence Force members have joined hundreds of local government officials, emergency experts, and medical and civic workers who have fanned out in vehicles, helicopters or simply on foot to help people still trapped in rubble.

“The earthquake can be described this time as a tsunami disaster,” Kan told the press Saturday morning after he returned from a helicopter survey to estimate the damage. Kan was referring to the tsunami waves hitting the coastal areas facing the Pacific Ocean.

The western coastal region from Japan’s northern Hokkaido island to the southern-most Okinawa continues to face a tsunami warning.

The quake also caused destruction in Tokyo, that experienced shocks of 5 magnitude and is home to 13 million people – a tenth of the national population. Five deaths have been reported in the city so far, mostly as a result of falling furniture inside houses.

Still, the strongest picture emerging from the chaos on the ground is the stoic patience of the Japanese public.

Japanese television stations provide round the clock news and information, blankets and food are pouring in from other areas, while hotels are permitting stranded people to stay in safety.

Take Masaru Kendo, a newspaper man, who delivered his lot of newspapers in central Tokyo just 15 minutes after the tremor. He said to panicked staff at an office he visited: “I’m sorry I’m late.” He then ran up another flight of stairs to his next destination.

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By IPS Correspondents
BANGKOK, Jan 27 2010 (IPS)

When disaster strikes, acute stress disorders, especially among children, may follow. Yet the need for early psychosocial interventions is often overlooked, if not ignored.

The impact of disasters is especially severe on the children, said Aloysius Rego, deputy executive director of the Bangkok-based Asian Disaster Preparedness Center (ADPC), which organised an open forum on ‘Psychosocial Response to Disasters with Focus on Children in Asia’ in this capital on Tuesday with the support of the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

“They face recurrent images of the severity of the disaster, which continue to be traumatic for them,” he said at the forum proper, which was attended by mental health representatives from the Asian region.

“Psychosocial support will greatly assist people, especially children, in recovering mental health. This is why we need to build more effective systems, structures and mechanisms and this requires long-term support,” he said.

The challenges of treating post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) among child survivors of disasters are made all the more difficult by the lack of political will and preparedness of countries during times of emergencies.

“We can build capacity and have resources but unless there is a political commitment and framework that has been set, then nothing will work. Every disaster that happens, it means the same chaos follows,” Dr Satyabrata Dash, ActionAid Australia’s Bangladesh Head of Office project manager, told IPS during the forum.

Dash added that, even after the December 2004 tsunami that hit the Indian Ocean, people still think of psychosocial support as “a non-essential, luxury kind of thing.”

The Indian Ocean tsunami, which struck on Dec. 26, 2004, triggered by a 9.3-magnitude earthquake, killed more than 220,000 people in 13 countries surrounding the ocean, including Sri Lanka, India, Indonesia and Thailand. Reports say that more than 125,000 people were injured and over 1.6 million displaced.

In May 2008, Cyclone Nargis struck the southern part of Burma, killing at least 138,000 people and causing damages estimated at more than 20 billion U.S. dollars. In September 2009, Typhoon Ketsana inundated parts of the Philippine capital city of Manila, resulting in landslides and the displacement of thousands of families.

These and other disasters take a heavy toll on survivors’ psychological health. “There are less visible but no less severe psychosocial impacts of disasters on the population. These are, however, often neglected because we don’t assign economic values to them,” said ADPC’s Rego.

Dash said everyone must realise that economic rehabilitation is not likely to work if the person affected by the disaster is not sound psychologically. “If we are able to link this with, say, livelihood, then governments might listen more closely. For example, if I give you a sewing machine but you’re not mentally sound, how are you going to utilise it?”

For William Yule, professor emeritus at Applied Child Psychology, King’s College London, a comprehensive plan in times of crisis can never be emphasised enough.

“Every country in the world should have disaster plans ready in dealing with the mental health of individuals,” he said, adding that in large-scale disasters, no one has the luxury of individual counseling.

According to Dash, psychosocial efforts are a recent development in countries like Pakistan, Maldives, Burma and Bhutan. The Philippines and Indonesia, on the other hand, have a long history of psychosocial support in place.

“Children’s response to stress is different from an adult and more often than not their reactions to a crisis are influenced by the reactions of adults,” said Dr Benjaporn Panyayong, senior psychiatrist at Thailand’s Department of Public Health.

Benjaporn spent two years treating tsunami children survivors in the southern Thai province of Phang Nga, one of the worst-hit by the December 2004 tsunami.

“The first thing that we need to do is to protect children from further harm. But it is also important to help the parents first because they need help too,” she said.

The pediatrician and psychiatrist added that giving psychological first aids is a must in the initial stages of a disaster. Among the needs that should be met are stabilising the children’s emotions by getting them back to their family immediately or connecting them to a support group in the community.

Dr Atle Dyregrov, director of the Center for Crisis Psychology in Norway, stressed that the key elements in most disasters are information and care.

“The best way we can help people in times of disasters is to provide them with accurate and reliable information,” said Dyregrov, who is also a board member of the Children and War Foundation – an international research foundation based in Norway – and one of the founders of the European Society for Traumatic Stress Studies, a network of individuals in the field of psychotraumatology, or the study of psychological trauma.

He added that support from the larger community is crucial for survivors to “cultivate natural resilience.”

Citing as an example studies of post-traumatic stress disorder following an earthquake in northern China some years ago, Dyregrov said that 20 percent of the population that lived close to the epicentre suffered PTSD. Oddly enough, PTSD sufferers reached 30 percent of the population that lived 10 kilometres away from the epicenter.

“There was more community support and more volunteers working close to the epicentre, which lessened the number of those suffering from PTSD,” he said.

A 2008 study by Thai Prof Pichet Udomratn on the mental health and psychosocial consequences of natural disasters in Asia showed that up to 57.3 percent of disaster survivors suffered from PTSD.

Further, 30 to 40 percent of those directly exposed to disasters developed PTSD, while 10 to 20 percent of rescue workers likewise acquired the same disorder.

One of the challenges, at least in the Thai context, said Benjaporn, is how to help children verbalise the trauma. “Thai children don’t want to speak about their feelings or express themselves. When they feel sad or angry, they just smile,” she said.

While there is no big gap as far as Thai government support for mental health is concerned, Benjaporn admitted that it is difficult to find enough personnel who can deal with PTSD, especially in the local community affected by the disaster.

Another problem is the stigma attached to seeking mental health care in Thai society. “Too often, those who get treatment for PTSD are afraid of being labeled as ‘mad’ or ‘crazy’,” she added.

To make matters worse, Dyregrov said, problems in coordination among non-government organisations, bureaucracy, and humanitarian aids being misused, among others, hound most psychosocial support work.

ActionAid Australia’s Dash cautioned that psychosocial support should not be confined to PTSD. “Almost 150 million children are affected by natural and man-made disasters per year, including sexual abuse, gaps in education, and other psychological traumas that lead to deep-seated impacts with far-reaching consequences,” he said.

While there may be differences in the way individuals in the region face their trauma, Dyregrov still believes that at the most basic level, people, whether from the east or west, are all the same. “We’re much more alike than we are different and this is true even in times of disasters,” he said.

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By Amantha Perera
KALMUNAI, Sri Lanka, Dec 23 2009 (IPS)

“We have been here for almost five years. So many promises have been made, but very few have been kept,” complains Mohideen Nafia, 22, one of the survivors of the 2004 Asian tsunami still living in a temporary facility in the coastal town of Kalmunai, located 300 kilometres east of the capital, Colombo.

Newly married Nafia would have preferred a house of her own with her husband. But at the moment she has to make do with what amounts to a shelter, a one-room unit in a government-provided disaster camp, which the couple shares with Nafia’s family of five and is located about a one kilometre from the beach.

Nafia hails from the Sainathimaruthu village in Kalmunai, a major domestic fishing hub that bore the brunt of what has been touted as one of the deadliest natural disasters in recorded history. Three of its villages facing the sea – Maradamunai, Sainathimaruthu and Karathivu – suffered the heaviest damage at the time of the tsunami.

When the Asian tsunami, triggered by a 9.3-magnitude earthquake, hit the coasts of countries bordering the Indian Ocean on Dec. 26, 2004, hundreds of thousands of people across Asia were washed away at sea.

According to the International Federation of Red Cross some 226,000 people in 13 countries were killed in the aftermath of the tsunami. One of the hardest hit was Sri Lanka, along with India, Indonesia, and Thailand.

In the South Asian island state more than 35,000 people died, over one million were displaced, and some 100,000 houses were either damaged or destroyed by the tsunami.

At least one-third of the deaths, or some 10,000, were reported from the Ampara district that comprises Kalmunai, according to official government data. In the same district, approximately 27,000 houses were destroyed by the tsunami, the bulk of which was in Kalmunai. Villagers estimate that some 8,500 lives were lost in the densely packed beach at the height of the disaster.

Overall, the unprecedented disaster left a reconstruction bill of 330 billion rupees (3.2 billion U.S. dollars). The reconstruction effort was spearheaded by a government agency set up soon after the tsunami and which received the support of dozens of United Nations and other international agencies.

Sri Lanka’s Reconstruction and Development Agency has since wound down as has the massive reconstruction effort. Still many are without homes they could call their own.

“Getting land for the new houses has been a big problem; we have to first locate the land. If it is privately owned, (we) buy it,” says Ismail Thawfiek, the additional government agent for Sainathimaruthu village in Kalmunai, where Nafia hails from.

Most of the available lands are paddy or rice fields, which he says puts more pressure on otherwise limited public funds, as they need to be filled. “The biggest delay (in rebuilding the affected houses) has been in finding land and preparing it so that we can build the houses,” Thawfiek says.

The lack of land has been exacerbated by the government’s imposition of the no-build buffer zone along the Kalmunai coast. The then Sri Lankan government initially imposed a limit of 200 metres from the sea soon after the tragedy. Owing to pressure from the homeless survivors, it was later reduced to 65 m at Kalmunai and 100 m elsewhere in the tsunami-affected parts of the country, according to government officials

With just three days away from the fifth anniversary of the 2004 Asian tsunami, some 1,300 families, including Nafia’s, are still waiting for their houses to be built, since the government imposed a no-construction buffer zone along the beach soon after the tsunami.

“Even after five years since the tsunami, there are still problems, there are still issues,” admits Thawfiek.

Nafia’s grief is understandable. The sense of despair gripping her is matched only by her deplorable living conditions. Tin roofs are rusting, dirty water stagnates near the front door step and large pools of rainwater and garbage rot behind the tents. Chickens raised by families roam the compound, where small children play marbles.

“Look at this,” Nafia says, as she points to her squalid surroundings. It is “like living in hell. When it rains, it is all water, if it does not, it is all flies,” she says while waving her hands to chase away the flies.

She adds that none of the international relief agencies that poured aid into the tsunami-hit areas like Kalmunai helped her build her house while others are still waiting for government promises to be fulfilled, notably the reconstruction of their tsunami-destroyed homes. “The life we knew before the tsunami is like a dream. I don’t know why this happened to us.”

“We will give them houses very soon next year,” Thawfiek assures, arguing that the construction of new houses is moving according to plan once land has been located. At least 5,000 houses damaged by the tsunami in Kalmunai have either been reconstructed or repaired.

To date, there are at least 13 disaster camps – with at least 1,000 shelters out of an original 18,000 in the Ampara district – still spread through the coastal town while hundreds more that were displaced by the tsunami are still living with relatives.

Quite apart from Nafia’s complaint, the Kalmunai beach appears to have returned to what it was before the deadly tsunami waves left a path of destruction. It is now is a hive of activity – fishermen tend to their nets on the beach while others attend to the large multi-day trawlers anchored just offshore.

“We have returned to what (our lives were) before the waves struck, maybe even better,” says Mohideen Ajimal, one of the first fish wholesalers to return to the beach after the tsunami. Ajimal lost an infant son and a daughter to the disaster.

Pointing to the large boat repair yard that has been erected near his business premises, he says that it would never have been built if there was reconstruction effort after the tsunami. “We lost so much, but life has to go on, and it is better if life goes on better than before,” he tells IPS.

Next to the new fishermen’s society building is a tall red tower with loud-hailers pointing in all directions to warn the residents of any tsunami threat. “That helps too,” says Ajimal as his eyes darted toward the tower.

Among the houses that have been rebuilt since the 2004 tsunami disaster are swanky new structures, painted in bright colours that stand out amid the dull sun-baked cement facades of others. They have been rebuilt by owners who could afford to finance them. New schools have also been constructed, replacing the damaged ones.

Yet, there are still remnants of the huge Asian tsunami waves’ deadly foray inland in this predominantly Muslim town. In place of wall-to-wall houses that used to stand next to the beach before the tsunami struck are large, empty sandy patches. Wooden poles sticking out of mounds mark off the spots where thousands were buried.

On the side of the road that runs alongside the beach are the occasional houses or fishing huts that have been deserted by owners after the tsunami. They are bereft of roofs and window frames, having been washed away, decayed or carted away by thieves. Here goats seek shelter when the sun is too hot.

“We had a good house near the sea, but I lost two children and I don’t want to go back,” says Abdul Mannas, who has since moved to a new housing site about two km from the sea.

But at least the 35-year-old father of three is happy. He now lives in a new housing complex just outside Kalmunai town. “This house is smaller (than I had expected), but we are happier,” he says. “We can build two-story houses or extensions if we want to.” The houses at the French Friendship Village, where he lives, were built with the support of the French government.

Mannas says the he and others gladly vacated the protective zone. “It is death zone on the coast,” he says. “I don’t want to live there.”

But for those living in small tin-roofed sheds like Nafia, where three or so families share the dimly lit units in the camp near the Jumma Mosque, the nightmare never ends, not since the tsunami struck the Indian Ocean. “We have waited long enough; five years is a long time,” she rues.

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By Keya Acharya
MADURAI, India, Aug 5 2009 (IPS)

In Tamilnadu, southern India, and Uttar Pradesh, northern India, villagers have revived ancient systems of storing surface and groundwater that are putting them in a good position to contend with today’s changing climate.

The villagers’ initiatives, helped by NGOs, are supported by Oxfam India – a newly formed branch of the international charity – which now advocates these practices as adaptation models for all of India.

“There are several on the ground examples on how the rural poor can adapt to climate change,” says Aditi Kapoor, economic justice specialist at Oxfam India. “These are models that can be replicated by the government.”

As per the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)’s recent report, India’s monsoons will undergo significant change, increasing in intensity while decreasing in duration. That change is predicted to negatively impact India’s farmers, 60 percent of whom are smallholders.

In the rain-shadow state of Tamilnadu where rivers flow only during the brief winter rains following the northeast trade winds, the Gundar river basin supplying water to Madurai and its surrounding four districts, remains the most drought-prone.

Climate change has currently turned the rains here unpredictable and intense when they do fall – causing destructive flash floods and related disasters.

Now, an ancient watershed system dating from 300 BC to 200 AD that channelled these seasonal rains through anicuts and feeder canals into man- made water-troughs called ‘tanks,’ is being revived.

Historically, water was stored in different systems dug into the earth for agriculture, drinking water and domestic purposes. Tamilnadu’s granitic rock-base provides an ideal leak-proof base for storage.

The Dhan Foundation, working in 12 Indian states, is now working with local communities and the government to repair and reuse these ancient storage systems that served for millennia in drought mitigation and water conservation.

“What is very significant,” says MP Vasimalai of Dhan Foundation. “Gundar’s farmers are already knowledgeable about adapting to climate change, because the systems of flood mitigation and drought moderators have been with them since ancient times.”

The Foundation has organised villages with tanks to form a watershed association or ‘Vayalagam’ with paying members. Those using or benefiting from a tank’s repair are taxed according to the size of their land holdings.

The money pays in part for repairing the tanks and canals. The remainder of necessary funds are garnered from either government schemes or donor grants.

“That is our success, they pay,” says S. Sethuraman, Vayalagam president of the ancient Villur tank in Madurai district.

The Vayalagam also has a savings and loan system, keeping at least Rs. 20,000 (approx 480 dollars) as a drought-relief fund to be either used for tank-maintenance, or to be given as a loan to those wanting to conduct soil and water conservation.

The repairs and subsequent water-collection has been effective enough to extend the area of the tank from 25 acres to 100 acres and Sethuraman’s paddy-yield has increased by 750 kilogrammes per season.

At Parepatti village, Dhan Foundation has helped poor women from the lowest social rung in India to de-silt and reconstruct the ancient Kanmoi tank.

54-year-old Manjamma of Parepatti organised the women into various watershed associations and collected subscriptions for repairs.

“The men did not come forward”, she says. But once the tanks started working, “the benefits were open for all to see,” says Manjamma. “The cattle got water, the women grew greens along with the paddy which doubled in produce and there was enough water to harvest a second crop of millets.”

So far, 400 of Madurai district’s 2000 tanks have been repaired and are in use again, but A. Gurunathan of Dhan Foundation says they need 7-12 years to make the entire catchment is sustainable. “Or else it won’t work,” he says.

Madurai district’s top administrative official, District Collector Udaya Chandran, is familiar with the villages’ tank-restoration efforts.

He says that a competent third-party agency, like Dhan Foundation, can help bring about community spirit that can be harnessed by government schemes.

“This is one area where all stakeholders come around and start working jointly,” says Chandran.

Thousands of kilometres north of Madurai, in the stark, ravine-dominated landscape of Bundelkhand in Uttar Pradesh, villages within an 80-kilomtre radius have, very successfully, contoured their dry, degraded lands, built ‘bunds,’ spillways and small checkdams to help hold whatever rains fall and in turn to recharge groundwater.

In Sunderpura and Tajpura villages here, farmers can now source groundwater through tube wells for their crops, whatever the weather.

Using natural systems of bio-composting with farmyard manure and bio- pesticides, nearly 25 acres of land in Sunderpura village have now been irrigated for the first time.

“The bonus is that wastelands have now become constructive agricultural lands with a safety-system against climate change that has also checked migration to cities,” says Anil Singh of Parmarth, the NGO initiating the work with Oxfam’s support.

In Tajpura village, 42-year-old Ajan Singh’s low-cost, natural-input system of cultivating vegetables now has such a reputation for quality that all his produce gets sold locally at higher-than-market rates.

Singh nets a minimum annual Rs. 40,000 (1000 dollars) through a system that will stand him in good stead to cope with lessening rains and rising temperatures in the region.

“So it is not that these people do not know about the ecological impacts of climate change,” says Radhey Krishna. ” It is inbuilt in them because of their [dry] landscape.”

“All the fields have bunds,” says 40-year-old Bituli, leader of a self-help group formed with help from an Oxfam-aided women’s empowerment NGO Samarpan.

The villagers’ indigenous method of agriculture using bio-compost, intercropping and local seeds is as ancient as Tamilnadu’s community tanks – but government policies encouraging monoculture, chemicals, and hybrid seeds had broken this age-old practice.

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