Reclaiming Paradise

Conservation groups move to protect South Asia from future damage — natural and manmade

The South Asian tsunamis not only killed more than 200,000 people, but also severely damaged coral reefs, forests, beaches, and marine life. Now many conservation groups

in the United States and elsewhere are planning reconstruction projects and are lobbying to ensure that rebuilding efforts protect the environment and include measures to limit the damage of future natural disasters.

For example, the World Wildlife Fund and Conservation International, both in Washington, are working with Indonesian groups on a project to seek donations of timber from foreign governments or companies to help rebuild Aceh, Indonesia.

“Not only would this contribute to the reconstruction efforts and humanitarian needs, but also provide an environmentally preferable alternative to cutting Indonesia’s rain forest,” says Justin Ward, Conservation International’s senior director for agriculture, forestry, and fisheries. Representatives of both groups say they have begun talks with the U.S. timber industry about the project, but that it is too soon to announce any details.

Close Ties

For some environmental groups, the strong connections to tsunami-ravaged areas that they had before the disaster enabled them to act immediately.

Days after the earthquake-triggered waves did their damage, the Global Greengrants Fund, in Boulder, Colo. — which provides small grants to grass-roots environmental organizations — began getting requests for help from its advisers in the affected regions. It also began hearing from donors who wanted to contribute.

That presented a new challenge for the charity, which does not ordinarily pay for relief projects. “There was a moment of, ‘This isn’t the kind of work we do,’” says Jimmy McClements, the organization’s director of communications. “Our advisers said, ‘Hey, we’ve got to.’”

The group used its network of advisers and charities that had received previous grants to get money to the region quickly. It has raised about $220,000 for projects to bring food, medical supplies, and clean drinking water to villages in India, Indonesia, and Sri Lanka.

In the longer run, Global Greengrants aims to raise about $6-million for a three-year effort to support groups that are working to protect coastal and marine environments in the tsunami regions and elsewhere. It says it wants to spread the use of techniques that have been effective in some coastal communities — for example, allowing fishing communities to manage and protect local fisheries.

Seacology, an organization in Berkeley, Calif., dedicated to preserving island environments and cultures, also departed from standard practice by setting up a tsunami-relief fund to help rebuild four villages in Sri Lanka, Thailand, the Maldives, and the Andaman Islands where the group had volunteer coordinators on the ground.

“The board thought long and hard about this issue because we are not a relief organization,” says Duane Silverstein, Seacology’s executive director. “To routinely provide relief, particularly focused on islands throughout the world, which have many disasters throughout the year, would deplete our funds rather rapidly.”

But given the magnitude of human suffering, the group decided to set up a fund that would channel 100 percent of the money raised directly to tsunami victims. “We have such close relationships with the villages it didn’t seem right to keep one single cent of it,” Mr. Silverstein says.

Seacology set out to raise $117,000, but has brought in more than $200,000. A local group, United Bay Area Artists, has agreed to supplement that amount by donating proceeds of a gala benefit this month.

Personal Connection

At the Nature Conservancy, in Arlington, Va., M.A. Sanjayan, one of the group’s scientists, had a personal interest in the tsunami, which struck on his birthday. The native Sri Lankan says that when a friend who runs the Sri Lanka Wildlife Conservation Society asked him to help carry out an assessment of the tsunamis’ impact on key national parks, he decided he had to go. He offered to use his vacation time, but the conservancy agreed to help pay for his trip.

The money to support the assessment has come from donors such as the Seedlings Foundation, operated by Karen Pritzker, an heir to the Hyatt Hotel fortune, and her husband, Michael Vlock, who live in Branford, Conn. The foundation awarded the Nature Conservancy a $50,000 grant.

Mr. Vlock, a boating and nature enthusiast, says the disaster has the potential for broad environmental implications. “Trash and debris were being sucked out to the ocean on a biblical scale,” he says. He learned about Mr. Sanjayan’s work at the Nature Conservancy by searching the Internet for groups who shared his concerns.

The National Geographic Society also agreed to help underwrite the trip and to document it for its “Radio Expeditions” project with National Public Radio. Two “Radio Expeditions” reports on the trip were broadcast nationwide in February.

Mr. Sanjayan also wrote a series of “postcards from the field” for the conservancy’s Web site that have been viewed by thousands of visitors.

Based on its assessment, Mr. Sanjayan’s team presented a series of recommendations to the Sri Lankan government, including urging it to hire local workers to remove debris that is threatening coral reefs and marine life and to start a program to remove plants and animals that could harm the local habitat, such as the prickly pear cactus, that were spread by tsunami waves. Mr. Sanjayan says the government has begun implementing the recommendations and has asked the conservancy to stay involved in future rehabilitation efforts.

‘Loath’ to Ask for Money

Some environmental groups so far have avoided making tsunami-related appeals to the public for money. “Quite frankly, I think we’re loath to do that,” said Bill Eichbaum, vice president for endangered spaces at the World Wildlife Fund. “There’s been a lot of people out fund raising.”

But that may change now that some relief organizations have ended their tsunami fund raising and donors are starting to think about long-term rehabilitation projects.

Environmental groups say that the tsunamis, horrible as they were, have the potential to wake up donors and developers to the importance of building in an environmentally sensitive way. The United Nations Environment Program issued a report in late February noting that areas in South Asia that had healthy coral reefs, mangrove forests, and coastal vegetation suffered less damage than others.

“As far as conservation issues are concerned, this represents an unprecedented opportunity,” says Nick Kulibaba, manager for post-tsunami rehabilitation and reconstruction for ACDI/VOCA, a nonprofit international community-development organization in Washington. “Entire communities have to be rebuilt from scratch; nothing is left. Here is a chance to get it right.”

Alfredo Quarto, director of the Mangrove Action Project, in Port Angeles, Wash., hopes the disaster will bring more attention to his organization’s mission: preservation and restoration of mangrove forests, which have been cleared in many coastal areas to make way for businesses such as shrimp farms. “Tsunamis, hurricanes, these kind of weather events will occur again,” he says. “As long as there is development of coastal areas taking out mangroves, we’re going to have disasters.”

The charity’s Web site urges visitors to donate to its projects to restore mangroves in tsunami-affected regions. That appeal has raised just a few hundred dollars, but the organization plans to step up fund raising in the coming months by contacting foundations and asking for help in its next mailing, Mr. Quarto says.

Mr. Sanjayan says he hopes donors will begin to realize that if they want to help the people affected by the tsunamis, they have to consider ways to rebuild the affected regions in an environmentally healthy way. He notes, for example, that tourism has badly damaged coral reefs in the Hikkaduwa Marine Sanctuary. Many residents make their living operating glass-bottom boats and dive shops, but if efforts to restore their jobs do not include measures to protect the reefs, the source of their livelihoods could eventually disappear, he says.

“If we don’t think about how sustainable that is, all we’re throwing them is a ring to float in the ocean for a few years instead of pulling them back into the boat,” Mr. Sanjayan says.

U.N. Appeal

When the United Nations issued a “flash appeal” for emergency aid for tsunami victims in January, it included a $1.9-million request for the United Nations Environmental Program to conduct environmental assessments, clean up waste, and rehabilitate natural resources. Clayton Adams, a program assistant in the environmental program’s Washington office, says that marked the first time his organization will be working with the State Department to coordinate projects involving American companies and nonprofit groups.

The U.S. Agency for International Development, which will pay for much of the tsunami-reconstruction work, will ensure that all its projects are environmentally sound, says John Wilson, director of the Office of Technical Support in the Bureau for Asia and the Near East. He anticipates there would be money for environmental rehabilitation projects, but says it is too soon to say how much because Congress has not yet approved any money.

IUCN-the World Conservation Society — an international organization of governments, nonprofit groups, and scientists who promote environmental protection — is working to coordinate and guide tsunami-recovery efforts. The group, which receives most of its funds from Western governments, is operating a clearinghouse, providing ecological assessments of tsunami damage, and preparing guidelines for policy makers in the affected countries on how to restore their industries in an environmentally healthy way.

John Waugh, program coordinator at the group’s Washington office, helped organize an emergency meeting in January for American nonprofit groups, companies, government agencies, and others to discuss the disaster.

He has concluded that better mechanisms are needed to respond early to some of the environmental challenges of future disasters — for example, how to remove sludge. “Nobody knows what to do with it and it’s mixed with all kinds of contaminants,” he says.

The good news is that all parties seem willing to learn from this disaster and to do things better the next time, he says. “The tsunami for better or worse set the reset button,” he says.