The December 26th Tsunami:
Impact and Damage Assessment
Arguably, the most profound impact of the tsunami was on the lives of individuals. Making sense of the rubble to which lives had been reduced, communities everywhere—through individual, state and non-state agency—began to rebuild within hours of the catastrophe. Six months on, preliminary assessments are giving away to more thorough accounts and nuanced understandings of what has happened and what it will take to recover.
There is an uneven quality to these in terms of what they cover. There have been several general assessments made, focusing broadly on humanitarian and economic matters, but nothing compares to the many very specific assessments of environmental damage that have been undertaken covering everything from salination to mangrove protection. Very surprising gaps emerge as well--there is very little on displacement and trafficking--both issues which exercise policy and advocacy circles worldwide. What one finds are news reports that tell us that people have been displaced or that trafficking is taking place, but not serious studies or assessments of the practice.
December 2004 Tsunami Damage Assessments
- Pieter Waalewijn and Daniel Renault, Human tragedy, more than physical damage, places the Tsunami among worst water-related disasters ever, FAO website.
- Office of US Foreign Disaster Assistance. Indian Ocean Tsunami Damage Overview. January 6, 2005.
- East-West Center, Tsunami: Information System Launched/Political, Economic, Environmental, Health Impacts, East-West Wire, December 30, 2005.
- Oxfam, The Asian Tsunami: Three weeks on, January 2005.
- Jayanthi Iyengar, India, Sri Lanka count the cost, Asia Times Online, January 4, 2005.
India
- Wikipedia, Effect of the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake on India.
- Asian Development Bank, Tsunami Impact Summary: India, April 14, 2005. (Available in PDF)
- Asian Development Bank, United Nations and World Bank, India Post Tsunami Recovery Program: Preliminary Damages and Needs Assessment, New Delhi, March 8, 2005.
- World Bank, Counting the Cost: Rebuilding Lives and Property in India after the tsunami, March 14, 2005.
Maldives
- Wikipedia, Effect of the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake on the Maldives.
- Asian Development Bank, Tsunami Impact Summary: Maldives, April 11, 2005.
- Asian Development Bank, United Nations and World Bank, Tsunami: Impact and Recovery, February 8, 2005.
- The Commonwealth Small States Secretariat, The Maldives: In the wake of tsunami disaster.
- UN-Habitat, Concern for Small Island States highlighted in wake of Tsunami, January 17, 2005.
Sri Lanka
- Wikipedia, Effect of the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake on Sri Lanka.
- Department of Census and Statistics--Sri Lanka, Impact of Tsunami 2004 on Sri Lanka, June 16, 2005.
- Asian Development Bank, Tsunami Impact Summary: Sri Lanka, April 14, 2005.
- Asian Development Bank, Japan Bank for International Cooperation and World Bank, Sri Lanka 2005 Post-Tsunami Recovery Program: Preliminary Damage and Needs Assessment, Colombo, January 10-28, 2005. See also, other links here.
- World Bank, Tsunami Recovery in Sri Lanka: Damage and Needs Assessment, February 5, 2005.
Lives lost
How many lives were lost to the tsunami? The shock of daily revised tallies in the thousands lingers, but the search for definitive counts appears to be in vain. The cynical assumption is that the numbers vary depending on whether it is in an agency's interest to inflate or underestimate them. Wikipedia quotes a range (228,000–310,000); however, there are many difficulties in arriving at a death count where bodies were not necessarily recovered.
- Rocky Lopes, The Futile Search for a Hard Number, Washington Post, January 9, 2005. Rocky Lopes chat transcript, January 10, 2005.
- Michel Thieren, Asian tsunami: death-toll addiction and its downside, Bulletin of the World Health Organization, Vol. 83, No. 2, February 2005.
India
- Josy Joseph, Is India underestimating its tsunami dead? Times of India, December 30, 2004.
The tsunami's impact on women's lives
- Oxfam Briefing Note, The tsunami's impact on women, March 2005. (Related press release: Three months on: New figures show Tsunami may have killed up to four times as many women as men, March 26, 2005)
- Thalif Deen, Tsunami Impact: Women, Children Suffer Most in Overcrowded Camps, Inter Press Service News Agency, June 7, 2005.
- PlanetWire.org, UNFPA Calls for Greater Security for Women Affected by Tsunami, January 6, 2005.
- Robert Lalasz, The Indian Ocean Tsunami: Special Challenges for Women Survivors, Population Reference Bureau, January 2005.
- Criminals prey on tsunami victims across the world, China Daily, January 4, 2005. See also Alternative for India Development's initial assessment of the post-tsunami situation in Chennai for a vivid description of gender-specific everyday difficulties.
- Division for the Advancement of Women, United Nations, 2005 News Tsunami: Policy guidance on the gender perspectives of natural disasters, 2005. See also, Women2000 and Beyond series volume, Making Risky Environments Safer, April 2004.
India
- SNEHA Nagapattinam, Rehabilitation of Women Victims of Tsunami, February 9, 2005.
Maldives
- Krithika Ramalingam, Post Tsunami: Waves of Neglect, India Resource Center, May 20, 2005
The tsunami's impact on children
- Thalif Deen, Tsunami Impact: Women, Children Suffer Most in Overcrowded Camps, Inter Press Service News Agency, June 7, 2005.
- Save the Children, Protecting Separated Children in Asia.
- Save the Children, Tsunami Relief and Reconstruction: Through the Eyes of Children, June 2005. Summary here.
- Psychosocial Impact of the Tsunami on Children: Sri Lanka, India and Indonesia
- World Vision UK, Child Protection in Emergencies--The Asian Tsunami, January 6, 2005.
- Elizabeth Poster, Editorial: Providing Tsunami Assistance, Journal of Child and Adolescent Psychiatric Nursing, Jan-Mar 2005
- Women's Commission for Refugee Women and Children, Adolescent and Youth Education in Emergencies, no date.
Sri Lanka
- Tsunami victims vulnerable to traffickers, February 26, 2005.
Displacement
- Frank Laczko and Elizabeth Collett (International Organization for Migration), Assessing the Tsunami's Effects on Migration, Migration Information Source, April 1, 2005.
- Refugees International, Millions Displaced by Tsunami, May 20, 2005.
- Peter Beaumont, Tsunami: 500,000 still homeless, The Observer, June 19, 2005
- Global IDP Project, Sri Lanka: Response to tsunami crisis must also target conflict-affected IDPs, Norwegian Refugee Council, March 7, 2005.
Trafficking
- Juliette Terzieff, From Tragedy to Slavery, AlterNet, January 24, 2005.
- Human Trafficking.org, Update: Threat of Trafficking in Tsunami-affected Countries, June 2005.
- Exploitation of Tsunami Victims Causes Concern, The SouthAsian.org, January 14, 2005.
Public Health and Trauma
- Tsunami International Survey on Emotional Impact
- Haroon Ashraf, Tsunami wreaks mental health havoc, Bulletin of the World Health Organization, London, June 1, 2005.
- Ramya Kannan, What kept Nagapattinam healthy, safe, The Hindu, January 27, 2005.
Other socio-economic impact
The consequences of an event like this run deeper than any analytical categorization can capture. Here are linked articles on the particular problems of older people, of the loss of identity and of separated families, for example. Each of these in turn affects productivity, prosperity and security within a society, but there is not a lot of research out there to spell out these causal linkages.
- Helpage International, Tsunami: The impact on older women and men, February 2005.
- Loss of identity: Tsunami leaves a world of drifting 'ghosts', The Observer, June 19, 2005.
- International Committee of the Red Cross, FamilyLinks page and also Asia disaster: Additional (non-Red Cross) sites to help locate family members
Environmental damage
There have been more assessments of environmental damage than any other dimension of the tsunami's impact.
- United Nations Environment Programme, After the Tsunami: Rapid Environmental Assessment Report, February 2005. A glimpse into the report, provided by Ochieng' Ogodo, Tsunami's Legacy Includes Airborne Toxins, SciDev.Net, 3 March 2005.
- Food and Agriculture Organization, Forests and Tsunamis.
- Food and Agriculture Organization, Agriculture and Coastal Ecosystems.
- Tsunami Impact on Ground Water Conditions (map).
- John Headland, COPRI Responds: South Asia Tsunami, Coasts, Oceans, Ports, Rivers Institute (COPRI).
- Natural Mitigation of Natural Disasters, Wetlands International. See also, Wetlands and the Tsunami and the assessments commissioned under the Ramsar Convention and linked at that site.
- Ben Fertig, Tanya Foster and Irene Nicholas, Tsunamis and the International Response: Economic, Social and Environmental Dimensions, April 2005.
- International Coral Reef Institute, Special Page: Tsunami Impact on Coral Reefs.
Maldives
- UNEP, Maldives Post-Tsunami Environmental Assessment, June 17, 2005.
Sri Lanka
- Sanjayan, Postcards from the Field: An Assessment of Tsunami Damage in Sri Lanka, The Nature Conservancy, January-February 2005.
Economic cost
- Macroeconomic Impact of the Tsunami on Southeast Asia, April 25, 2005.
- Food and Agriculture Organization, Fisheries Department Tsunami Relief Page.
- A.T. Hagiwara and G. Sugiyarto, Poverty Impact of the Tsunami: An initial assessment and scenario analysis, Asian Development Bank, May 2005 (Draft paper)
- Overseas Development Institute, The Indian Ocean Tsunami: What are the Economic Consequences? News Release, December 31, 2004.
- Simon Maxwell and Edward Clay, The Asian Tsunami: Economic impacts and implications for aid and aid architecture, ODI Opinions 32, January 2005.
- James Darcy, The Indian Ocean tsunami crisis: humanitarian dimensions, Humanitarian Policy Group, Overseas Development Institute, January 11, 2005.
- John Roberts, The Indian Ocean Tsunami: How can the region recover economically? ODI Opinions 34, January 2005.
India
- P. Sainath, The Tsunami and India's Coastal Poor, Counterpunch, January 6, 2005.
Maldives
- World Bank Press Reviews, Tsunami's impact worst for Maldives, less for others, February 23, 2005.
Post-script: Technology-related Issues
- Tsunami and Technology, Science, Technology and Society Program, University of Texas at Austin.
- Shrikant G., Tsunami: A technology blunder, CIOL, December 28, 2005.
- Atomic Energy Research Board, Impact of Tsunami Waves on Nuclear Reactors at Kalpakkam, no date.
- C. Raja Mohan, Island India in Indian Ocean? Indian Express, December 29, 2004.
Last updated June 26, 2005