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When will an international task force be set up to identify potentially lethal formulas for environmental disaster? The US government knew about the faulty levies off the coast of New Orleans. Tsunami watchers knew the potential dangers in Sri Lanka, Indonesia, India and Thailand. Last year the Bangladesh tragedy was also foreseen. Now comes Myanmar. More than 22,000 people dead and 41,000 missing.

Nature’s coastal protectors are mangroves. They are dwindling and weakened worldwide due to environmental destruction. Fell trees, soil erodes and weakens, shorelines recede, mangroves disappear and storms have clearer paths to crash – harder and faster.

Hauntingly the following was reported by AP and featured on the web site for the Mangrove Action Project, which has offices in the US, Indonesia, Asia, and Latin America. Many of the staff come from the Peace Corps and other international human rights organizations (Notice the headline and dateline):

Environmental problems loom in Myanmar

14 October 2007By MICHAEL CASEYBANGKOK, Thailand - Truckloads of illegal timber cross the Myanmar border to sawmills in China, while markets along the Thai border openly sell bear paws, tiger skins and elephant tusks.Further inland, the repressive military regime plans to dam one of Asia’s purest rivers, and allows gold and gem mines to tear up hillsides and pollute groundwater for quick cash.Myanmar has become notorious in the region for ignoring international and its own environmental laws in a single-minded effort to make the money that environmentalists say helps keep the regime in power.”They may have laws on the books but they mean extremely little,” said Sean Turnell, an expert on the Myanmar economy with Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia. “I would say environmental considerations mean zero to them. It wouldn’t even enter their heads.”After decades of self-imposed isolation, the junta in the late 1980s began courting foreign investors with offers of stakes in gem mines, forest tracts and hydroelectric projects. Foreign investment allowed the regime to double its military to 400,000 soldiers while offering neighbors like China and Thailand access to cheap raw materials and energy to feed their growing economies.A Myanmar government spokesman did not respond to a request for comment on its environmental record. Chinese government officials could not be reached for comment and Thailand denied its investment in Myanmar contributes to the country’s environmental destruction.Hardest hit in the rush to develop the country formerly named Burma have been its rivers and forests, environmentalists say.

Several months ago, in a tall office tower in the center of Mumbai, Debi Goenka, one of India’s most well-known environmentalists, showed me and a small international audience of environmental activists, a film about mangrove destruction in India. Debi, who used to live on the seashore, has moved to miles away to the top of a hill.

He did it, he said, because he knows what’s coming…

It’s time we alert the rest of the world to the places most environmentally tenuous.

May 7th, 2008 by Thomas Kostigen in deforestation, natural resources, ocean life, politics, weather | 2 comments | RSS feed | Trackback >