Mangrove destruction partly to blame for Myanmar toll: ASEAN chief

Yahoo News 6 May 08;

The destruction of mangrove forests that served as a buffer from the sea is partly to blame for the massive death toll from a cyclone in Myanmar, the head of the ASEAN regional bloc said Tuesday.

More than 15,000 people have died after the cyclone swept through the Irrawaddy river delta over the weekend and pounded Myanmar's main city of Yangon, the country's state media reported.

"Why the impact is so severe is because of the increase of the population," said Surin Pitsuwan, secretary general of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, to which military-ruled Myanmar belongs.

This has led to an "encroachment into the mangrove forests which used to serve as buffer between the rising tide, between big waves and storms and the residential area," he said in a speech in Singapore.

"All those lands have been destroyed. Human beings are now direct victims of such natural forces."

Surin was giving a keynote address at the launch of a new centre at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies to focus on non-traditional security threats. These include climate change, degradation of the environment, and diseases such as bird flu.

The official New Light of Myanmar newspaper said the devastated town of Bogalay, in the heart of the Irrawaddy river delta where the storm swept ashore, had suffered most of the losses.

The Irrawaddy is one of the most heavily silted rivers in the world because of deforestation and intensive agriculture activities along its banks, the ASEAN Regional Centre for Biodiversity Conservation said on its website.

It said land outside the reserved forests has been converted for agricultural use and mangrove forests within the reserve "are now disappearing at a rapid rate."

The centre cited a study which said that if the rate of destruction between 1977 and 1986 was maintained, all mangrove forest would disappear in 50 years.

Mangrove loss 'left Burma exposed'
Mark Kinver, BBC News 6 May 08;

Destruction of mangrove forests in Burma left coastal areas exposed to the devastating force of the weekend's cyclone, a top politician suggests.

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."

His comments follow a news conference by Burma's minister for relief and resettlement, Maung Maung Swe, who said more deaths were caused by the cyclone's storm surge rather than the winds which reached 190km/h (120mph).

"The wave was up to 12ft (3.5m) high and it swept away and inundated half the houses in low-lying villages," the minister said. "They did not have anywhere to flee."

Storm shelter

Mangroves have been long considered as "bio-guards" for coastal settlements.

A study published in December 2005 said healthy mangrove forests helped save Sri Lankan villagers during the Asian tsunami disaster, which claimed the lives of more than 200,000 people.

Researchers from IUCN, formerly known as the World Conservation Union, compared the death toll from two villages in Sri Lanka that were hit by the devastating giant waves.

While two people died in the settlement with dense mangrove and scrub forest, up to 6,000 people lost their lives in a nearby village without similar vegetation.

"Mangroves are a very dense vegetation type that grows along the shore," explained Jeffrey McNeely, chief scientist for IUCN.

"Where the saltwater and freshwater meet, that is where the mangroves grow; they often extend from several hundred metres to a few kilometers inland.

"Especially in river deltas, mangroves prevent waves from damaging the more productive land that are further inland from the sea."

Lowering defences

A recent global assessment found that 3.6 million hectares of mangrove forests had disappeared since 1980.

The study carried out by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) said that Asia had suffered the greatest loss, with 1.9 million hectares being destroyed, primarily as a result of land use change.

It found that large-scale conversion of mangroves into shrimp and fish farms were among the main destructive drivers.

Other pressures included new development to accommodate the growth in the tourism sector and rising populations.

Mette Wilkie, a senior forestry officer for the FAO, said most of the mangroves in Burma had suffered as a result of being overexploited.

"There are very limited areas that you would describe as pristine or densely covered mangrove in the Irrawaddy area," she said, referring to the region of Burma where Cyclone Nagris first made landfall.

"There are some efforts in place to try to rehabilitate and replant mangroves, but we do know that the loss rate is quite substantial still.

"During the 1990s, they lost something like 2,000 hectares each year, which is about 0.3% being lost annually.

"But that does not give you the whole picture because the majority of these tidal habitats are being degraded, even if they are not being completely destroyed."

Growing awareness

However, the global picture is not entirely bleak. The FAO assessment showed that the annual rate of destruction had slowed from 187,000 hectares during the 1980s to 102,000 hectares during the early 2000s.

Some nations, such as Bangladesh, had actually increased mangrove cover, the FAO reported.

The role mangroves can play in reducing the devastation caused by extreme weather events was among the reasons behind Bangladesh's decision to protect one of the world's largest examples of the coastal habitat.

The Sundarbans, located in the delta of the Ganges and Brahmaputra rivers, contain about 100,000 hectares of mangrove forest habitat.

"This has been allowed to grow, or in part at least, because Bangladesh was really hammered by a typhoon that killed something like 300,000 people a couple of decades ago," Dr McNeely said.

"They realised that if they did not have that mangrove buffer, another typhoon heading up the Bay of Bengal would cause even worse damage because the population is even more dense than it was then."

Delta of death
Straits Times 7 May 08;

Witnesses describe rice fields littered with corpses, while charitable organisations expect death toll to rise as tens of thousands remain missing in wake of Cyclone Nargis
YANGON - THE area worst affected by the cyclone that struck Myanmar is a vast and populous delta criss-crossed by canals and inlets, factors that made the damage extensive and delivering aid extraordinarily difficult.

Several other reasons have also been cited for the scale of the disaster, including the destruction of mangrove forests that acted as a buffer against the sea, the lack of an early- warning system and a tidal wave that came in the wake of the killer storm.

Based on a satellite map made available by the United Nations, the storm's damage was concentrated over an estimated 30,000-sq-km area along the Andaman Sea and Gulf of Martaban coastlines - less than 5per cent of the country.

But the affected region is home to nearly a quarter of Myanmar's 57million people.

Aid workers say delivering food, clean water and other supplies to far-flung villages will require an intensive response.

'Our fear is that many in the rural population have been cut off,' said Mr Paul Risley, spokesman in Asia for the World Food Programme, a UN agency. 'In some villages, 90per cent of shelter was destroyed or damaged.'

Witnesses yesterday described rice fields littered with corpses, and there are fears the official death toll of more than 22,000 will rise further as tens of thousands remain missing.

Christian relief organisation World Vision, one of the few international agencies allowed to work inside Myanmar, said its teams had flown over the most affected regions and witnessed horrific scenes on the ground.

'They saw the dead bodies from the helicopters, so it's quite overwhelming,' Mr Kyi Minn, an adviser to World Vision's office in Myanmar's main city of Yangon, told AFP in Thailand by telephone.

'The impact of the disaster could be worse than the (2004 Asian) tsunami because it is compounded by the limited availability of resources on top of the transport constraints,' he said.

Save The Children, another relief agency allowed to operate in the country, said it expected the toll to climb as high as 50,000.

'If at this stage, only four days in, the government is telling us the numbers are already reaching over 20,000 and there are 40,000 people missing, I think it could well go higher,' spokesman Dan Collinson told AFP.

'I wouldn't be surprised if it went as high as 50,000.'

Aid agencies reported their assessment teams had reached some devastated areas but getting in supplies and large numbers of aid workers would be difficult.

Mr Richard Horsey, the Bangkok-based spokesman for the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Aid, said the delta was riddled with waterways, but these were not easily accessible, even during normal times.

'The big concern is waterborne diseases. So that's why it's crucial to get safe water in. Then mosquito nets, cooking kits and clothing in the next few days,' he said. 'Food is not an emergency priority. Water and shelter are.'

Asean Secretary-General Surin Pitsuwan said the destruction of mangrove forests that served as a buffer against the sea was partly to blame for the huge death toll.

'Why the impact is so severe is because of the increase of the population,' he said.

This has led to an 'encroachment into the mangrove forests which used to serve as buffer between the rising tide, between big waves and storms and the residential area,' he said in Singapore.

'All those lands have been destroyed. Human beings are now direct victims of such natural forces.'

Questions were also being raised yesterday about inadequate warnings on the approaching storm, although Indian meteorologists insisted they had given Myanmar a 48-hour warning before the cyclone struck land.

'Forty-eight hours before Nargis struck, we indicated its point of crossing (landfall), its severity and all related issues to Myanmarese agencies,' Indian Meteorological Department spokesman B.P. Yadav said.

The department is mandated by the United Nations' World Meteorological Organisation to track cyclones in the region.

Myanmar Minister for Relief and Resettlement, Maung Maung Swe, told reporters yesterday that the high death toll was caused by a massive wave that gave people nowhere to run.

'More deaths were caused by the tidal wave than the storm itself,' he told a news conference.

'The wave was up to 3.5m high and it swept away and inundated half the houses in low-lying villages,' he said, giving the first detailed description of the disaster. 'They did not have anywhere to flee.'

In Yangon, power remained cut for a fourth day for almost all its 6.5million residents, while water supplies were restored in only a few areas.

Buddhist monks and Catholic nuns wielding knives and axes joined residents in clearing roads of fallen ancient trees that were once the city's pride.

Of the dead, only 671 were in Yangon and its outlying districts, according to state radio. The rest were all in the vast swamplands of the delta.

NEW YORK TIMES, ASSOCIATED PRESS, AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE, REUTERS