Our planet has experienced damaging climatic change in recent years. It is not that the human race is experiencing climatic wrath first time in history but the alarming side is its frequency, intensity and growing unpredictability. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the global world temperature has increased by 0.6oC over the last 100 years and is expected to rise further by 1.4 to 5.8oC before the end of the present century.

Developing nations, specially in our region are more vulnerable to impact of climate related disasters. It’s mainly due to weak governance, lack of required infrastructure and technology, prevailing scale of poverty and more important, the lack of vision and commitment to address this mounting threat.

Coastal areas are particularly the most vulnerable places. With increasing temperature, glaciers and icecaps are melting fast, raising sea levels. As sea level rises, salt intrusion, tidal vector, inundation of low lying areas and cyclones also increase. It also makes the sea more disastrous.

A Greenpeace report warns that left unchecked climate change could lead to global temperature increases of between 4-5°C, unleashing a barrage of impacts that will drive mass migration in India, Pakistan and Bangladesh. A recent assessment indicates that tropical storms will indeed increase in frequency and/or intensity due to climate change (Trenberth 2005).

Post-disaster research carried out along the Tsunami-hit coast provides several evidences that conservation of natural resources particularly mangroves and coral reefs is the best protection against climate change related disasters in coastal areas. Mangroves forests are the most effective wave energy absorbents. Research has shown mangroves are able to absorb between 70-90 per cent of the energy from a normal wave.

Mangroves provide double protection - the first layer of mangroves with their flexible branches and interweaved roots hanging in the coastal waters absorb the first shock waves. The second layer of tall mangroves then operates like a wall withstanding much of the wave energy.

In 1960, a tsunami wave hit the Banglladesh coast in an area where mangroves were intact. There was not a single human loss. These mangroves were subsequently cut down and replaced with shrimp farms. In 1991, thousands of people were killed when a tsunami of the same magnitude hit the same region.

Ratan Kar and R. K. Kar of Birbal Sahni Institute of Palaeobotany, in their paper, “Mangroves can check the wrath of tsunami” observed: “the data from Tamil Nadu. Kanyakumari, Nagapattinam, Pondicherry and Chennai have the dubious distinction for having maximum number of deaths and destruction of properties. All these places have high density of population which led to the virtual disappearance of mangroves from the coast over several decades. But Pichavaram and the adjacent region near Chidambaram in the Cauvery delta have minimum causalities because of the thick mangrove vegetations which made the tsunami less lethal. This place is situated between Nagapattinam and Pondicherry and the tsunami might have struck it with the same lethal speed, yet it escaped mass destruction.”

Similarly, Myanmar and Maldives suffered lightly from the killing spree of the tsunami because the tourism industry had so far not spread its tentacles to the virgin mangroves and coral reefs surrounding the coastline. The large coral reef surrounding the islands of Maldives absorbed much of the tidal energy and restricted the human loss to around 100 dead.

In another research, The World Conservation Union (IUCN) compared the death toll from two villages in Sri Lanka that were hit by the devastating giant waves. Two persons died in the settlement with dense mangrove and scrub forest, while up to 6,000 people died in the village without similar vegetation. The research has also proved that short term economic benefits at the cost of natural resources are out weighed by climate change disasters.

Since the 1960s, the Asian sea-coast region has been plundered by the large industrialised shrimp firms that brought environmentally-unfriendly aquaculture to its sea shores. Shrimp cultivation, rising to over eight billion tonnes a year in the year 2000, had already played havoc with the fragile eco-systems. The “rape-and-run” industry, as the Food and Agricultural Organisation of the United Nations (FAO) once termed it, was largely funded by the World Bank.

Nearly 72 per cent of the shrimp farming is confined to Asia. It is carried out by removing mangrove in swamps. Whatever remained of the mangrove was cut down, the entire coastline along the Bay of Bengal, Arabian Sea, and Strait of Malacca in the Indian Ocean and all along the South Pacific Ocean has been a witness to massive investments in tourism and hotels. All this greed took the toll of nature and in 2004 nature hit back levelling off all the profits accrued through myopic approach of development.

Having grown tenfold in the last 15 years, shrimp farming is now a $9 billion industry. Shrimp consumption in North America, Japan and Western Europe has increased by 300 per cent within the last ten years. The massive wave of destruction caused by the December 26 tsunami in 11 Asian countries alone has surpassed the economic gain that the shrimp industry claims to have harvested.

With at least 150,000 people dead it brought unprecedented socio-economic losses. World governments had to pledge $4 billion in aid. This does not include the billions that are being spent by relief agencies. If all costs added, economic benefits of unwise development look too tiny.

Sindh Coast: Sindh has over 350 kms long coast, rich in natural resources. The coastal areas of Sindh are most vulnerable and exposed to cyclones. According to some reports, Sindh coast had an average of four cyclones in a century However the frequency and intensity has increased manifold and the period 1971-2001 records 14 cyclones (A Review of Disaster Management Policies and Systems in Pakistan for WCDR 2005).

The cyclone of 1999 in Thatta and Badin districts wiped out 73 settlements, and resulted in 168 lives lost, nearly 0.6 million people affected and killing of 11,000 cattle. It destroyed 1,800 small and big boats and partially damaged 642 boats, causing a loss of Rs380 million. The losses to infrastructure were estimated at Rs750 million. Unofficial sources put these figures on much higher scale. Last year another cyclone Yemen narrowly missed Karachi coast and brought horrible disaster along Makran coast.

The recent decades have witnessed massive decline in mangroves forest in Sindh due to shortage of environmental flows to Indus Delta. Till 19th century the delta would receive annually some 150 MAF water from the river system. This amount was gradually chopped off due to a series of upstream dams and barrages. A number of huge water projects including two big dams Tarbella and Mangla along with Jinnah, Kotri, Marala, Taunsa and Guddu barrages have been built without taking into consideration their downstream climate change impacts.

The water accord of 1991 provisionally guarantees 10 MAF subject to further studies to establish the actual need to maintain the delta eco-system. However, ever since the accord came into place, the quantity of promised flow has hardly been maintained. In 2000-2001, the delta received less than one MAF water. This reduced fresh water flow has also reduced inflow of nutrient loaded silt, which supports mangroves growth.

Till late 70s, the mangroves cover was approximately 260,000 hectares, which reduced to 160,000 hectares in early 1990s. The recently conducted studies by WWF put the figures to a shocking low of about 80,000. In addition to that, sea intrusion has spoiled around two million acres of fertile land in Thatta and Badin.

In the recent years, Sindh government and City Government of Karachi has kicked off a massive waterfront development programme on Karachi coast, that includes construction of a new city at Bundaar and Dingi islands, where few of the remaining healthy tracts of healthy mangroves are struggling for their survival.

Another Dubai-style city named as Sugarland city is being planned at Hawksbay. These developments are bound to make Karachi coast more vulnerable to climate change impacts. While tsunami has forced governments to consider investing in natural resources, our decision makers are investing in disasters.