A view of the port of Atafona's fishing boats on the Paraíba do Sul River. The sedimentation of the mouth of the river makes it difficult for larger vessels to enter and they have started to operate in ports in other locations, with additional costs and losses for the economy of Atafona. Credit: Mario Osava/IPS

By Mario Osava
ATAFONA, Brazil , May 17 2024 (IPS)

Coastal erosion has been aggravated by climate change and has already destroyed more than 500 houses in the town of Atafona in southeastern Brazil. Movements led largely by women are working to combat the advance of the sea and generate economic alternatives.

Atafona, one of the six districts of São João da Barra, a municipality of 37,000 inhabitants, is 310 kilometers by road northeast of Rio de Janeiro. It is a town with its own identity. Fishermen, who were joined by middle-class families from nearby large cities, built their vacation homes there.

Sonia Ferreira did so in 1980, when she lived in Rio de Janeiro. She moved permanently to Atafona in 1997, when she witnessed the disappearance of the three blocks that separated her house from the beach. In 2008, she saw the town’s tallest building—four stories—collapse across the street from her house.

She has photos recording the downfall of the building that housed a supermarket and a bakery on the first floor and a hotel upstairs. Her house would have been the next victim, but the sea granted her an 11-year grace period. “I will only leave when the wall around the house falls,” she would tell her family when they pressured her to move to a safer place.

Sonia Ferreira, 79, the president of SOS Atafona, stands next to the remains of a four-story building that the sea toppled in 2008. Credit: Mario Osava/IPS

But from 2019 to 2022, the sea level started to rise again. “In 2019, the first piece of the wall fell. I fixed up the little house at the back of the lot and moved in, but I kept the big house with the furniture until 2022, when the water reached the house and the floor gave way,” she told IPS at her current home, near her daughter’s house.

“The sea does not hit in overpowering waves, but erodes the sandy soil, infiltrates underneath the buildings, undermines their structures, and the house is basically left hanging in the air,” she described.

In late 2022, she decided to demolish the “big house” in a painful process after sadly seeing the wall fall down in pieces. But then she could not live in the small house in the backyard, which was invaded by a large amount of sand, so she was taken in by her daughter. Widowed, she has two other children who live abroad.

At the age of 79, Sonia Ferreira channels her love for the area as president of SOS Atafona, an association with about 200 active residents, mostly women, who debate and lobby the public authorities for solutions to stop the advance of the sea and other problems in the neighborhood.

Sonia Ferreira stands in front of what was left of her home, which she decided to demolish in 2022 after coastal erosion knocked down its outer walls and washed out the sandy base, leaving just columns. Credit: Mario Osava/IPS

Fishermen Suffer Climate Injustice

“Fishermen have been hit the hardest,” she said, as vacationers have resources such as other homes.

The original settlers are the main victims of climate injustice in Atafona. The rising sea level and the intensification of the northeast wind not only destroyed their houses but also exacerbated the siltation at the mouth of the Paraíba do Sul River, limiting the access of boats to the fishing port on the river through a narrow channel.

Faced with the difficulties, the larger vessels prefer to deliver their fish to distant ports, some 100 kilometers to the north or south, at the expense of the local economy, lamented Elialdo Mirelles, president of the São João da Barra Fishermen’s Colony.

The president of the São João da Barra Fishing Colony, Elialdo Meirelles, is photographed at the repair port for fishing boats on the Paraiba do Sul River, near its mouth. Credit: Mario Osava/IPS

Meirelles estimates that about 400 fishing families lost their homes on Convivência Island, which was in the Paraíba do Sul River delta, where the problems began.

Only 200 families were given new houses by the government, while the rest were dispersed or have been living for years with the benefit of “social rent,” a small sum from the municipality to help pay for rental housing.

That is why he believes that the houses engulfed by the sea in the entire area numbered much more than the 500 or so estimated by the city government and that the erosion actually began before the 1960s, which is the time frame indicated by researchers.

Dunes are growing and threatening the streets and coastal housing in a part of Atafona Beach after the sea and sand destroyed more than 500 houses on the beach closest to the mouth of the Paraiba do Sul river. Credit: Mario Osava/IPS

“I was born on Convivencia Island in 1960, where my grandfather and father lived. My father lost two houses there, I lost two, and two of my brothers lost one each. The northeast wind was the cause,” he said. In 1976, the government began to remove settlers from the island, and the last ones left in the 1990s.

Then many families living in Pontal, the end point of the river’s right bank, also lost their homes. “Five streets were submerged,” he noted. As the island disappeared, that mainland area lost a barrier against the wind, he said."The sea does not hit in overpowering waves, but erodes the sandy soil, infiltrates underneath the buildings, undermines their structures, and the house is basically left hanging in the air." —Sonia Ferreira

Meirelles, who sought a new home away from the shoreline on his own, represents 680 registered fishermen in his entire municipality of São João da Barra, 56 percent of whom are from Atafona.

Causes of coastal erosion

“Climate change definitely aggravated the problem unleashed by several factors, especially human action that reduced the river’s flow,” said Eduardo Bulhões, marine geographer and professor at the Fluminense Federal University.

The main factor was the transfer of water from the Paraiba do Sul river to the Guandu river system, which supplies nine million inhabitants of outlying areas of Rio de Janeiro and was inaugurated in 1954. Since then, there have been expansions that have drastically reduced the flow of water in the river that runs into Atafona.

The river rises near São Paulo and crosses almost the entire state of Rio de Janeiro—in other words, a densely populated area of 1,137 km. Its waters, destined for other cities, industries, and hydroelectric generation, lost the volume and strength to carry sediment to the delta at the mouth as a barrier against the sea.

In addition to engulfing Convivencia Island and many blocks of Atafona, the sea advanced upstream, salinizing many kilometers of water table and affecting the municipality’s water supply.

The collapse of houses due to erosion is also caused by their irregular construction on dunes that have always existed in the town and are growing on part of the beach, said Bulhões.

The northeast wind, which is intensified by climate change and pushes the waters that erode the constructions and the sands that threaten to clog the coastal road and nearby houses, contributes to this, he said.

A solution to coastal erosion depends on studies to identify long-term feasibility and effectiveness, and the city government is preparing terms of reference to contract the studies, reported Marcela Toledo, São João da Barra’s secretary of environment and public services.

Women-led projects

This municipality is also located in an area impacted by oil exploration in the Campos basin, offshore Rio de Janeiro state. Due to environmental requirements, the state-owned oil company Petrobras, the main explorer, is financing the Pescarte Environmental Education Project to mitigate and compensate for these impacts, carried out by the North Fluminense State University (UENF).

In the project, which is focused on fishing as the most affected activity, women constitute the vast majority. The main proposals approved were refrigeration plants, industrial kitchens, fishmeal factories and processing plants, said Geraldo Timoteo, a professor at the UENF and the head of Pescarte.

In the Pescarte team, initially looking at environmental education and now at production, 48 out of a total of 59 employees are women. Of the 14 supervisors, 11 are women.

Fernanda Pires, an activist seeking solutions that add value to fish, runs the Arte Peixe cooperative, which produces eight types of fish and shrimp snacks in Atafona, Brazil. Credit: Mario Osava/IPS.

The organization of artisanal fishermen and their families is the central objective of the long-term (2014–2035) project. It also seeks to increase income through expanding the use of fish and providing better access to markets and cooperatives.

Now the idea is to promote aquaculture based on experiments conducted at the UENF.

Pescarte has also accumulated knowledge about the world of fishermen. It conducted two censuses in the 10 participating municipalities in 2016 and 2023, Timoteo told IPS.

In the second one, 46 percent of the people interviewed were women and 21 percent of them were responsible for 100 percent of the family income. In 37.9 percent of the cases, they shared this responsibility with their husbands.

Fernanda Pires is one of the participants of Pescarte in Atafona. Her activism for fish processing as a way of adding value is reflected in her practice as leader of the Arte Peixe cooperative, which produces eight types of fish and shrimp snacks.

Founded in 2006 by her mother, Arte Peixe has 20 female members, seven of whom work directly in production. The profits are limited, serving as a supplement to the main income obtained from other work or employment. Pires is a municipal employee, but new markets open up prospects for better profits in the future.

The leading role played by women in overcoming the problems in Atafona, threatened by coastal erosion and the decline in fishing, is perhaps due to the fact that “they study more, and have greater concern for the future, and a stronger sense of community,” said Bulhões.

In Pescarte, its directors observe that while men prioritize fishing in itself, upgrading their boats and equipment, and are absent from the city, spending more and more time at sea every day, women take care of processing the fish, sales and adding value; that is, they focus more on the future of the activity and of their lives.

IPS UN Bureau Report

Note: This feature is published with the support of Open Society Foundations.

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Excerpt:

Fisherpersons in Chiloé have cut off the 5 Sur highway on its way to the Chacao channel, which separates Isla Grande from mainland Chile. Protesting decades of neglect of this part of southern Chile, thousands of residents of the archipelago have joined the demonstrations by fishing communities affected by the ban on seafood harvesting due to the red tide. Credit: Pilar Pezoa/IPS

By Orlando Milesi and Marianela Jarroud
SANTIAGO, May 11 2016 (IPS)

A ban on harvesting shellfish in Chiloé due to a severe red tide outbreak sparked a social uprising that has partially isolated thousands of local residents of the southern Chilean archipelago and revived criticism of an export model that condemns small-scale fishing communities to poverty and marginalisation.

“I was born and raised on this island,” said Carlos Villarroel, the president of the Mar Adentro union of artisanal fishers in the municipality of Ancud, 1,100 km south of Santiago. “I am the son and grandson of artisanal fishermen. My father, who is now 70, taught me and my brother to work out at sea. None of us ever suffered before when there was a red tide,” he told IPS by phone.

But Villarroel and another 5,000 fishers in the southern Chilean region of Los Lagos are affected today by the red tide, a phenomenon caused when microscopic algae reproduce and cluster in one area of the ocean.

This “algal bloom”, which contains toxins lethal to marine life and also affects human health, can change the colour of the water – hence the name.

The latest red tide, the cause of which is not yet totally clear, and the solution for which is still being studied, began in February and reached its current intensity in April. This prompted health authorities to ban the harvest of shellfish within 1,000 kilometres of the country’s southern Pacific coast.

Small-scale fishers responded by launching protests on May 3, which have included roadblocks that have cut Chiloé off from food and fuel supplies and left local residents without transportation, classes or pension payments, while hospitals are facing serious difficulties and hundreds of tourists are stranded.

Thousands of the archipelago’s local residents have taken part in the demonstrations, complaining about decades of neglect by the government – the same complaint that sparked a similar social outbreak in 2012 in another southern region, Aysén.

On Monday, May 9, protests also broke out in Santiago and other cities around the country in solidarity with the demands voiced by the people of Chiloé.

The archipelago has a total territory of 9,181 sq km and is home to some 167,600 people in this country of 17.6 million, which has 6,435 km of shoreline.

Chiloé Island or Isla Grande, the main island, is the archipelago’s political, social and economic centre, where the two main cities are located: Ancud and the provincial capital Castro, world-famous for its palafitos, picturesque wooden houses on stilts. Chiloé is also known for its local myths, legends and beliefs.

Aquaculture and fishing are the economic mainstays of the islands, followed by the production of potatoes and grains, and crafts using fibers, wool and wood. An estimated 80 percent of the population depends on fishing.

“Chiloé is significant not in economic, political or social terms, but with regard to how the country sees itself,” social anthropologist Juan Carlos Skewes told IPS. “Chiloé is a powerful part of this country’s mystique, image and identity.”

He added that the conflict brought to light the neglect suffered by this part of Chile and the shortcomings of the current model of development, where large-scale seafood exporters largely monopolise profits in the industry.

“What the ‘Chilotes’ (Chiloé islanders) have seen in recent years is that salmon farming has flourished, but not much has changed in their lives.”

Skewes said that in this conflict, “local communities have more clearly seen the neglect and vulnerability they suffer, and how economically powerful groups operate without curbs.

“Apparently the convergence of these factors, added to the loss of a fundamental component, seafood harvesting, triggered this social outbreak,” he said.

The union headed by Villarroel represents 35 fishers who mainly catch the Chilean blue mussel (Mytilus chilensis), Chilean abalone (Concholepas concholepas), the hard clam (Mercenaria mercenaria) and the surf clam (Mesodesma donacium).

All of these have been contaminated by the red tide.

In previous outbreaks, “the seaweed hadn’t been contaminated, but now it has been. We’ve never seen that before,” Villarroel said.

He believes the salmon companies “have destroyed the marine system and seabed.”

The protests, which have included the burning of tires and clashes with the police, worry the government of socialist President Michelle Bachelet, which offered 1,100 dollars indemnification each for 5,500 artisanal fishers, to be paid in four installments, subject to the evolution of the red tide.

The compensation, which also included a basket of basic foodstuffs worth 37 dollars, was rejected by union leaders, who argued that the amount was too small and that it wasn’t being paid to all of the affected fishers.

In a new 28-point list of demands, they demanded the payment of 2,650 dollars in six installments, cancellation of their debts, and the declaration of a large part of Chiloé as a “disaster zone”.

They also called for greater regional control of local natural resources, lower fuel prices, a special regional minimum wage, guaranteed public health coverage, and a regional university.

Most scientists blame the red tide on climate change, which drove up water temperatures and caused an increase in algae and toxins.

But fishers and a number of experts blame the salmon industry, because it dumped nearly 5,000 tons of dead fish in the Pacific after they were killed by an earlier algal bloom.

However, SalmónChile, the salmon farming industry association, said the dumping of the fish “has no relation to” the current red tide, because “what is happening today has occurred normally for a long time in this area,” although with less intensity.

A study commissioned by the government to determine what caused the red tide could help clarify other unusual phenomena that have happened in recent months, such as the beaching of 337 sei whales in the gulf of Penas in the south of Chile in late 2015, or the mass die-off of 10,000 giant squid along the coast of the southern region of Bío Bío in January.

In addition, in the first week of May, some 20 tons of sardines washed up along the shore in the southern coastal region of Araucania – a repeat of a similar phenomenon involving more than 1,000 tons of sardines in mid-April.

Enrique Calfucura, an expert in the economics of natural resources at Diego Portales University in Santiago, told IPS that the red tide “could be explained by the fact that this year’s El Niño (a cyclical climate phenomenon that affects weather patterns around the world) was more intense than in 2015, heating up the temperatures in the Pacific and inland waters.”

He said water temperatures in Chiloé Island’s Reloncavi Sound rose between two and four degrees this year, leading to blooms of harmful algae.

With respect to the impacts of the salmon industry, Calfucura said “it is suspected that the phosphorus, nitrogen and other elements that fish farms discharge into the sea reduce oxygen and foment the growth of harmful algae.”

He said, however, that “other human factors that could influence red tide outbreaks still need to be scientifically studied.”

The expert said attempts to combat the red tide phenomenon around the world have been ineffective and will eventually have negative impacts on ecosystems.

In the midst of efforts by the government and scientific researchers to control the problem, Chiloé island residents remain adamant in their demand for assistance in keeping with the magnitude of the catastrophe, while at the same time insisting on measures to address what they describe as the long-time neglect of their region.

Edited by Estrella Gutiérrez/Translated by Stephanie Wildes

On average, women in self-help groups in a small fishing town in Tamil Nadu make about 80 dollars each month; it is just about enough to sustain fisher families, who receive free housing from the Indian government. Credit: Nachammai Raman/IPS

By Nachammai Raman
NAGAPATTINAM, India, Feb 12 2015 (IPS)

Geeta Selvaraj and a few other women take turns to prepare meals with just one large gas cooker in a tiny shop.

The piquant smell of masala wafts out to the crowded street to mix with plumes of vehicle exhaust and tantalize customers, who are mostly from the surrounding area of Nagapattinam, a predominantly fishing town in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu.

“We want self-help groups to be a tool to transform women into individual entrepreneurs. We want to build self-reliant communities." -- Senthil Kumar, reporting and monitoring officer for the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD)
Selvaraj’s income from her catering business has doubled over the last few years as her fisherman husband’s shrinks. “The men are not going out to sea like before,” she tells IPS, but she seems to have come to terms with this reality. “Because we [women] work, we don’t have to ask anyone for money and it helps with the household expenses.”

India is a major supplier of fish in the world and the industry employs an estimated 14.5 million people. The sector contributes about one percent of the country’s total GDP. Nagapattinam’s long coastline makes fishing its second most important industry after agriculture. According to the National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development, there are roughly 90,000 fishermen in what it calls the ‘fisheries capital’ of Tamil Nadu.

Traditionally, the women in the fishing community in this region stay at home or sell the fish their husbands bring back. But over the past few years, fishermen have been putting out to sea less often because of the scarcity of fish near the Indian coast and the fear of being caught by the Sri Lankan navy if they stray into the island’s territorial waters.

So, women in the community have stepped into the breach to provide for their families. They’re doing this by starting micro-enterprises and they’re the happier for it.

“Besides an income, it gives me a chance to get out of the house and interact with other people and know a little bit about what’s going on in the world,” says Selvaraj.

Micro-enterprises bring big changes

Nagapattinam district has a population of some 1.6 million people and a sex ratio of 1,025 women to 1,000 men. So, women form an important part of all development strategies in the district.

In a bid to weave women into the economic fabric of the region, the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) is assisting a Post-tsunami Sustainable Livelihood Programme that has given rise to thousands of micro-enterprises in the region, known locally as self-help groups.

IFAD, which is a specialised agency of the United Nations, is working with the local government. The goal is to establish at least 12,000 micro-enterprises in six coastal areas in Tamil Nadu by 2016.

Between 9,000 and 10,000 are already in operation now.

“We want self-help groups to be a tool to transform women into individual entrepreneurs. We want to build self-reliant communities,” says Senthil Kumar, who is the IFAD Reporting and Monitoring Officer for the programme in Tamil Nadu.

Since the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, fishing in the coastal areas of Tamil Nadu has taken a big hit. The damage to the fishing industry was about 4.8 billion rupees (about 65 million dollars).

Prior to the disastrous tsunami, fishing was considered a lucrative activity by the standards here. Fishermen on average could make about 300 dollars per month. Now, they say it’s whittled down to half of that.

Firstly, it was because the fishermen had lost their boats and nets. The government offered compensation to about 17,672 affected fishermen, but even after all the equipment was repaired or replaced, the industry did not rally to its pre-tsunami days.

Then, fishermen claim, there’s less fish near the Indian coast since the tsunami, which makes them sail into Sri Lankan waters for a better catch. But the Sri Lankan Navy impounds their boats and detains the fishermen. In the past few months, this has turned into a contentious issue between the Indian and Sri Lankan governments.

“More than 80 boats have been caught by the Sri Lankan navy,” says Govindaswamy Vijayan, a fisherman who owns two fishing boats. “Today we need bigger boats to avoid crossing the international border into Sri Lankan waters and sail out to deep sea. But most fishermen can’t afford them.”

Sustainable plans to sustain fisher communities

With fewer men putting out to sea in the primarily fishing town of Nagapattinam in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu, women are stepping into the breach through micro-enterprises. Credit: Nachammai Raman/IPS

The IFAD programme was created with a view to making coastal communities less dependent on fishing. However, as the men in the community refused to consider other trades, the prime beneficiaries of the programme have turned out to be women.

Women’s self-help groups were already burgeoning in the district after the tsunami as a means of income generation.

“When there’s a disaster, women are expected to care for the family. Feeding the children or other family members becomes their first concern and they immediately start getting involved in various activities,” says Vasudha Gokhale, a Pune-based professor at the BN College of Architecture who has studied how women in Tamil Nadu’s coastal areas coped with the tsunami.

But not all these self-help groups were successful because government officials chose their core activities. “Many of the women started micro-enterprises that they had little affinity for,” says Madhavan Krishnakumar, who works for a non-governmental organisation called Avvai Village Welfare Society.

Some of the micro-enterprises that fizzled out were involved in making plastic doors, bricks and candles. Their products were initially sold under the ‘Alaimagal’ brand.

“The government gave them funding incentives, but their entrepreneurial skills were not properly developed. They were not able to do the marketing or face professional competition, so they failed,” Krishnakumar explains.

A few NGOs such as the People’s Development Association were also involved in developing micro-enterprises in the district earlier on, but have now limited themselves to skills training for youth, according to its director, Joe Velu.

“There were too many people doing it. There was a lot of duplication and overlap. We felt it was becoming too much like moneylending.”

When IFAD came into the picture six years ago, the first thing they did was to conduct a survey. “We wanted to stabilise the movement,” says Kumar. “We graded self-help groups based on their performance and found the weaknesses that needed to be addressed to make the groups viable. Then we restructured the weak ones.”

Sufficient earnings, big savings

On average, the women in these self-help groups can take home about 5,000 rupees (about 80 dollars) per month, which a family of four can just about manage on thanks to the provision of free housing for fisher folk affected by the tsunami.

Revathi Kanakaraj belonged to a self-help group that was formed as far back as 2000, but it disintegrated after the tsunami. Then three years ago, she joined a new one under the IFAD umbrella. She finds it rewarding. “I’ve learned about micro-credit and I’ve learned about savings,” she tells IPS.

Financial literacy is one of the key components of the IFAD-assisted livelihood programme because its ultimate aim is to enable women to access credit on their own and encourage the habit of saving. “Previously, women in self-help groups didn’t know about interest rates and banking. But they’re managing their money very well now.”

The Tamil Nadu government reports that self-help groups across the state had a total savings of around 34 billion rupees (543 million dollars) as of 2012. Most of the women interviewed say they contribute between 20 and 120 rupees (0.32-1.92 dollars) per month.

Kasturi Ravi used to look forward to her husband’s return to shore and a nice income from the sale of the fish he had caught. But on Boxing Day ten years ago, her husband was washed back to shore dead in the devastating tidal waves that killed more than 6,000 people here, the worst affected district in India.

As she cleans dried fish for packing in a small salty-smelling shed with other members of her self-help group, she remembers how difficult it was to eke out a living after her husband’s death. She’s proud of where she is now.

She makes an average of four dollars per day. Although not a lot, it’s enough for subsistence. “I’m grateful for this because I can stand on my own feet,” she tells IPS.

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