By
Chris Hails 19/12/2005 - It’s
been a tough year of natural disasters. Since last year’s
Sumatran earthquake and subsequent tsunami wreaked havoc
on Asia and parts of east Africa, killing hundreds of
thousands of people and displacing millions from their
homes, we have seen the likes of Hurricane Katrina in
the southern states of the US, as well as heavy floods
in Europe, extensive forest fires in Spain and Portugal,
and mega-earthquakes in Indonesia and Pakistan.
The human dimensions of these tragedies
cannot be underplayed and the economic costs are still
being calculated. But is there anything we could have
done to soften these blows?
At first sight it would seem nothing,
that the destructive power of nature can be so overwhelming
it renders us helpless. However, investigations following
the Tsunami disaster showed that, for those places away
from the epicenter, an intact, stable and resilient environment
provided a vital cushion to mitigate the impact of the
waves. In fact, forceful impact and flooding was prevented
by intact mangroves in Thailand, vegetated sand dunes
in Sri Lanka, and fringing reefs around many of the Indian
Ocean’s low-lying islands. On the other hand, places where
coastal defenses had been degraded by human activities,
such as shrimp farming or coral mining, damage and loss
of life and property were much greater.
Such findings drive home to us the
importance of maintaining, and more importantly now, restoring
the integrity of the planet for our survival.
Climate change is perhaps one of the
greatest threats to our survival. In 2005, we finally
saw the ratification of the Kyoto Protocol, the first
real international instrument to tackle climate change
through the collective reduction of greenhouse gas emissions.
Many governments, unfortunately, are reluctant to come
to grips with the global climatic changes we are facing.
Too often we hear from countries that we can't afford
the costs incurred by potential threats. But, we should
be turning the argument on its head and asking “can we
not afford” to take such threats seriously?
The United Nations took the threat
seriously enough to establish a high-level panel on challenges
to global threats and security, concluding that environmental
degradation has enhanced the destructive potential of
natural disasters and in some cases hastened their occurrence,
and that biological security must be at the forefront
of protection. But, the panel’s report ducked real recommendations
about what to do.
The UN Millennium Ecosystem Assessment
— compiled by more than 1,300 of the best scientists and
analysts from 95 countries — also concluded that human
activity is putting such strain on the earth’s natural
functions that the ability of the planet’s ecosystems
to sustain future generations can no longer be taken for
granted. But this assessment barely raised eyebrows in
the international community. More disconcerting, the UN-hosted
World Summit this past September barely touched on environmental
security with the agenda only giving climate change a
passing mention over the more central themes of poverty
and security.
Yet the traditional models to deal
with poverty and security — mainly unbridled economic
growth for one and strengthened military power for the
other, are the approaches which have failed us for decades,
and can never succeed unless based upon a safe and secure
environment.
Where was security when the floodwaters
wrecked New Orleans? We thought we had the engineering
prowess to build a city on a silt-based river delta, interrupting
the natural deposition cycle and lulling hundreds of thousands
of people into the false sense of security that it was
okay to live next to and below sea-level. Couple that
with extracting oil and gas from below the delta and add
to it years of draining the natural wetlands and coastal
marshes, it was a recipe for disaster.
Ironically, we knew all that, but
a 1998 programme to restore Louisiana’s coastal marsh
system was never adopted. Why? The US$14 billion price-tag
put people off. However that cost now seems like a good
deal compared to the US$125 billion of damages resulting
from Katrina, the US$50 billion to repair New Orleans,
and the 1,000-plus lives lost in which no price tag can
be attached.
But Katrina was a hurricane, one of
many in a season where we ran out of names for them. Scientists
are reluctant to come out and state definitively that
the extreme 2005 hurricane season is a result of global
warming. This is a pity because we know that climate change
is giving us more extreme weather events. By the time
enough scientific data has accumulated for scientists
to state with confidence that climate change is to blame,
we may have experienced many more Katrinas.
To best mitigate future extreme events,
we as an international community will have to start making
more strategic and cautious decisions, and stop taking
foolish risks with the life support system that we all
depend upon. A stable, sound environment will not guarantee
safety in the wake of colossal natural disasters — like
the Asian tsunami or American hurricane — but the evidence
is there before us that it reduces the risks. The evidence
is also there that our aspirations for the future cannot
be met unless we start to tread more gently upon the thin
crust of the sphere upon which our lives depend, and take
better care of the atmosphere that sustains us.
* Dr Chris Hails is Conservation Programme
Director at WWF International, based in Gland, Switzerland. |