In Photos: Life After 10 Years of Tsunami - Part 1

It's been 10 years since the devastating Asian Tsunami happened. How have things changed on the ground since then, especially for those who bore the brunt of that disaster? To find the answer, I recently visited some villages along the east coast of India. Shared here are few glimpses of life I saw there.


 And now there's another shrine - The Tsunami Temple

The Tsunami in 2004 took a lot - lives, homes and assets included - but also gave something. This structure, for example, emerged out of  the sea  next to the famous shore temple of Mahabalipuram  and quickly gained popularity as the Tsunami Temple. Natarajan, a tourist guide told me, 'this is our latest attraction'  and then, "but you can't go there. It's too slippery".   Now, that's a fitting gift of a disaster!

"Tourism matters, tourists matter, we don't"

Prabhakar Sharma sells souvenirs on the beach. After the Tsunami in 2004, the government was quick to restore the Shore Temple of Mahabalipuram, he said. But,  for the owners of over 100 makeshift shops that were also destroyed by the tsunami, there hasn't been any compensation. A bitter Sharma told me this : "The govt invested well into restoring the temple and the facilities for the tourists. But we, the beach traders who sustain the tourists interests, were left to lick our  own wounds. We just didn't matter"

           A new trail of disasters

There is an alarming rate of erosion along the coast and every village has at least half a dozen houses that are in various stages of destruction.

Building climate resilience: Unlock the technology

In 2012, I went to Inner Mongolia to see how local nomadic communities were fighting an advancing desert. I was very fascinated to see how they were building a green wall in the middle of a sandy land. It was then that I heard an expert from the United Nations Convention for Combating Desertification (UNCCD) say, ‘many countries, especially India, have so much of knowledge and technology in their labs. But little of that is reaching the people on the ground. We need to make that happen.”

Putting life back in lifeless sand. In Inner Mongolia, scientists and locals have worked hand in hand to make this miracle happen.

Two year later, today, at the 4th Asia Pacific Climate Change Adaptation Forum in Kuala Lumpur, I heard many experts expressing the same view again – a logical, practical and extremely timely expression.

One of them was Rajib Shaw, a professor of disaster and risk management at Kyoto University. 

Gender-Inclusive Adaptation: Vanuatu Shows the Way

Have you ever been to, or, if you pardon my saying so, even heard of Vanuatu? I honestly hadn’t and actually had to search Wikipedia for help! And this is what I found: it’s a very small country on the pacific coast, next to Fiji and New Guinea. The population of the entire country is just 250,000 – which is smaller than some of our cities.

It was from this tiny, hard-to-find-on-the-map island nation that we heard one of the most powerful pieces of information on the 1st day of the 4th Asia Pacific Climate Change Adaptation Forum in Kuala Lumpur (APAN2014): the country is following a 50% reservation for women policy when it comes to negotiating climate change and also implementing climate change adaptation projects.
 

An areal view of Vanuatu

I was at a session on “gender sensitive adaptation” in Johar Keda auditorium of the Putra World Trade Center where the forum is taking place.

Doha Bound: I have got mixed feelings!

Its Tuesday night and I can't wait for next twenty four hours to pass by. The reason is, on Thursday  early morning, I will take a flight to Doha, Qatar. That's the city where this year's UN Climate change summit or COP18 as its called, is happening.

At COP17, I had met these small and marginal farmers' group from Bolivia. My eyes will again be looking for such groups and the developments to help farmers affected by climate change

Jonathan Pershing - negotiator from the US, playing his role of a climate denier to the perfection at COP17 in Durban at 2011. Wonder if he has mellowed down a bit since then!

It will be my second straight year at a COP. It, however, almost didn't happen. Because, the Climate Change Media Partnership fellowship, offered jointly by Internews, IIED and Panos London - which had sent me to Durban last year, was cancelled this year for lack of fund. I had applied again and was also short listed. So, when the fellowship was cancelled, my hopes were dashed.

But then, like a miracle, I got a sponsorship, from United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification(UNCCD).