The Hindu : Tamil Nadu / Chennai News : "Assess factors that led to destruction of mangroves"

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Tuesday, Jun 21, 2005

Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu - Chennai

"Assess factors that led to destruction of mangroves"

Special Correspondent

Environment protection: a lesson taught by successive disasters

CHENNAI: : The Special Commissioner and Commissioner of Revenue Administration, R. Santhanam, on Monday stressed the need for a dispassionate assessment of the factors that had contributed to the destruction of mangroves and coral reefs that were natural agents of reducing the disastrous consequences of tsunami and cyclone.

Inaugurating a two-day seminar on "State and Civil Society Collaboration in Disaster Mitigation and Reconstruction" here, he said one of the lessons the State had learnt from successive natural disasters such as drought, floods and the December 24 tsunami was the need for protecting the environment.

"The post-tsunami situation offers an opportunity to assess and monitor the experience of our eco-system to potential impacts of risks and hazards, which affects coastal areas periodically. There is a need for a comprehensive coastal zone management strategy. The need for implementation of coastal zone regulations has assumed priority," he said.

According to environmentalists, the country's mangrove cover had been reduced to one-third of the original area in the last three decades. Between 1963 and 1977, India lost 50 per cent of its mangrove due to aquaculture. Over 70 per cent of the coral reefs, which absorbed the ocean's fury by breaking the waves, had vanished.

Cost-effective warning systems

Mr. Santhanam called for examining the possibility of evolving cost-effective early warning systems by linking unlikely hazards such as tsunami and likely hazards. Since no disaster reduction initiative would succeed without the total involvement and full participation of the community, the Government would continue the disaster risk management programme in collaboration with the UNDP and the Centre, he said.

Integrating disaster risk management into development frameworks would lead to sustainable development, Mr. Santhanam said. Development of indigenous knowledge systems could also help in mitigating disasters. "There is space for both high-tech early warning system and the low-cost indigenous warning system which can both be complementary to each other."

President of the Centre for Security Analysis (CSA), V.R. Raghavan, said the seminar assumed significance as the recent tsunami had highlighted the effectiveness of the Government and non-Government coordination in the mitigation and reconstruction efforts. Director of the India Habitat Centre (IHC), R.M.S. Liberhan, stressed the need for adopting a holistic approach of disaster management.

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