Indian State Faces Ecological Crisis After Cyclone
12/2/99
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Title: Indian state faces ecological crisis after cyclone
Source: Reuters
Status: Copyright 1999, contact source for permission to reprint
Date: December 2, 1999
Byline: Himangshu Watts
BHUBANESHWAR, India, Dec 2 (Reuters) - India's eastern state of Orissa
faces an ecological crisis after a cyclone ravaged its coast in
October, killing 10,000 people and flattening forests.
``The ecological balance has been delicately upset,'' the Forest and
Environment Department's special secretary, S.C. Mohanty, told Reuters
on Thursday.
Property damage is estimated at $1.5 billion -- but the bill does not
include the 90 million trees that were uprooted and the damage to vast
tracts of pristine mangrove forests.
Scientists and environmental groups say this could trigger extreme
temperatures and flash floods.
The state forest department and the environmental groups are seeking
2.8 billion rupees ($64.59 million) to regenerate damaged forests and
plant trees along 1,500 km (950 miles) of highway.
The state government has estimated that about 50,000 hectares (123,500
acres) of forest land, including 20,000 hectares (50,000 acres) of
mangrove forests, were damaged by the cyclone.
This could make life even more difficult for villagers whose paddy
fields were destroyed in the disaster and who are now forced to depend
on forest products to eke out a living.
``People will have very little choice but to venture into the
forests,'' said Abhash Panda of the Orissa Forestry Forum, a
consortium of non-government groups in Orissa.
WIND SHELTERS DAMAGED
The cyclone has also destroyed 18 hectares (44 acres) of trees,
planted along the coast as a cyclone buffer, Mohanty said.
The belt of trees, up to one km (0.6 mile) thick in some stretches,
was planted after a 1971 cyclone killed 10,000 people.
But it could not withstand the latest battering.
About 80 percent of the plantation was damaged, Mohanty said.
``Without these trees, even a mild cyclone can cause a lot of
damage,'' he said.
The breach of several embankments along the seashore has also made
coastal regions vulnerable to flash floods, Panda said.
The destruction of trees could cause winter temperatures to dip and
summer temperatures to soar, said Ravindra Singh Thakur, deputy
director of the state-run Regional Research Laboratory.
``Trees act as a buffer. They prevent the local temperature from
rising too high and falling too low,'' he said.
Thakur, member of an international project on global warming, said
recent studies showed a change in climate in Orissa.
A research paper, to be presented to a seminar in February, showed the
state experienced more cyclones than floods in recent years. Earlier,
their frequency was roughly the same.
Scientists are investigating whether the change is linked to the rise
in the surface temperature of the Bay of Bengal over the last two
decades, he said.
($1 - 43.35 rupees)