by Michael Kramer-Duffield
The tsunami of December 2004 devastated many coastal areas of South and Southeast Asia. Some of the hardest-hit areas were those in which coastal mangroves had been severely depleted due to overdevelopment and poor resource management, among other reasons. In these mangrove-depleted areas there was little or nothing to buffer the impact of the tsunami before human-populated areas were directly hit, leading to the extensive damage and loss of life we have all since seen. The Coastal Poor Development Action Network (COPDANET) has been working since the tsunami to restore coastal mangroves in the hard-hit Andaman Islands to help protect them against future natural disasters.
The Andaman Islands are located in the Indian Ocean about 750 miles off the eastern coast of India. They are among many places that have naturally occurring coastal mangroves – dense thickets of saline-tolerant aquatic trees and plants that serve as natural barriers to storms and tsunamis, as well as an important habitat for marine life. Where mangroves had already been depleted due to years or decades of poor management, damage was severe. According to an MSNBC article, “Areas that had mangroves suffered the least destruction. In the Andaman and Nicobar islands, for instance, there are many places where mangroves and coral reefs are still intact. If they weren’t, it could have been much worse,” said Debi Goenka, an environmentalist with the Bombay Environmental Action Group. “Tamil Nadu, on the other hand, suffered so much because it had no mangroves or coral reefs and most of the construction is on beaches or close to high tide areas.”
Unfortunately, the 2004 tsunami also destroyed mangroves in many areas that were previously intact, leaving those areas extremely vulnerable to future storms and tsunamis. On the Andaman and Nicobar Islands alone, more than 4,000 hectares of mangrove forest were obliterated and at least 8,000 additional hectares were damaged by the tsunami, according to A. Raja, the Union Minister for Environment and Forests.
COPDANET is a non-governmental environmental group based in the state of Tamil Nadu, India, on the Bay of Bengal coast. It has been working with poor and marginalized coastal communities since 1988. The primary aim of COPDANET is to advocate for the rights of coastal communities and help them protect the coastal resources they depend upon, especially the region’s mangrove forests. COPDANET also provides relief to coastal communities affected by natural disasters, such as typhoons, epidemics, famine, floods, and tsunamis. Most recent grants to COPDANET have gone to aid victims of the 2004 tsunami in hard-to-reach areas along the western coast of the Bay of Bengal. These are poor communities that may have otherwise been overlooked during immediate post-tsunami relief efforts.
Another COPDANET project is the mangrove restoration on the Andaman Islands. This includes sensitizing local people to the importance of mangrove preservation, direct replanting of mangroves, establishing community-based protected zones, and setting up a database, website and resource center in South Andaman. As recently as August, COPDANET was nearing completion of a Mangrove Resource Center near the Andaman capital of Port Blair.
COPDANET Priorities in the Andaman Islands:
- To do research and discover and identify all mangrove species in the Andamans.
To publish color booklets with photographs of identified species, which will aid local public schools, colleges and other educational organizations in teaching about mangrove biodiversity. - To propagate and restore mangroves in degraded areas with the cooperation and help of the Ministry of Forest and Environment.
- To start a mangrove awareness campaign through popular theater, public meetings, workshops, and celebration of a Mangrove Protection Day.
- To encourage mangrove science and education through leaflets and video demonstrations.
- To create a database and website for Andaman mangroves, and to share the information throughout Asia and the world.
- To train educated youth in poor communities to initiate community-based mangrove management and conservation committees.
- To stop illegal logging through lobbying for community-based protection zones.
2005 Greengrants funding is currently helping COPDANET to support the mangrove restoration on the Andaman Islands, including COPDANET’s information programs, mangrove replanting and establishment of community-based protected zones. Greengrants also provided grants in 2004 and 2002 to support COPDANET mangrove preservation projects near Pulicat Lake – the second largest brackish ecosystem on the east coast of India and a vital resource for local plant, animal, and human populations. Global Greengrants will continue to support COPDANET and other tsunami-recovery and mangrove-management operations throughout South and Southeast Asia, as we help communities to recover from the last disaster and to prepare for the possibility of the next one.