Unintended Consequences

By Cernig

The BBC is reporting that the typhoon disaster in Burma wouldn't have been so bad if there had been more mangroves, which break up wave surges from big storms preventing killer tidal waves and floods.

ASEAN secretary-general Surin Pitsuwan said coastal developments had resulted in mangroves, which act as a natural defence against storms, being lost.

At least 22,000 people have died in the disaster, say state officials.

A study of the 2004 Asian tsunami found that areas near healthy mangroves suffered less damage and fewer deaths.

Mr Surin, speaking at a high-level meeting of the Association of South-East Asian Nations (ASEAN) in Singapore, said the combination of more people living in coastal areas and the loss of mangroves had exacerbated the tragedy.

Encroachment into mangrove forests, which used to serve as a buffer between the rising tide, between big waves and storms and residential areas; all those lands have been destroyed," the AFP news agency reported him as saying.

"Human beings are now direct victims of such natural forces."

The world has been losing mangrove areas to human development at the rate of 100,000 hectares plus every year for decades now - and in Louisiana, Sri Lanka and now Burma humans have died as an unintended consequence of modernisation and tourism. In places like Florida, they're now sinking rock-filled boats along the edges of their denuded mangrove swamps in the hope of encouraging their expansion.

I don't really have a point here beyond the obvious one - that messing with the environment always has payback and that head-in-the-sand denial leaves blood on the denialists' hands. But that's a point worth making more often. Although I would note that those most likely to be enironmental denialists over such as global warming and rampant development are also likely to be those most enamoured of solving the resultant humanitarian messes by military action, dropping thousands of pounds of high explosive on the landscape...including the mangroves. That'll so help in the long run.