The 2004 Tsunami in Aceh and Southern Thailand: Coastal Ecosystem Services, Damages and Resilience

The expression of a “black swan” became popular during the 2008 economic crisis by a bestselling book by Nicolas Taleb (2007); today a “black swan” is an allegory to describe an event which is deemed highly improbable (unthinkable within experienced reality), yet can cause massive consequences when it actually occurs. Originally, in the Old World, a “black swan” was the quintessential “rare bird on Earth”, and only with the discovery of black swans in the 17th century on Australia the conviction that all swans must be white was overturned. In 2010 the allegory, however, reached a new dimension of pictographic realism as the largest-ever oil pest was (and still is) turning thousands of sea-birds into tar-balls in the Gulf of Mexico. This oil pest was caused by the technical limitations to provide a quick fix to a leak from an oil well that is more than a kilometer below sea level (The Economist 2010). The oil pest is now magnitudes larger than anything seen before; it will have a lasting impact on the region’s coastal ecosystems for decades to come. It is a stark reminder of today’s exposures and fragilities of the coastal zone and the human technical limitations, economic dependencies and short-sighted priorities in dealing with risks. The great “black swan” of the year 2004 was of natural origin and of an even more sudden catastrophic nature. During only one day (26 December) a huge tsunami killed up to about 300’000 people (two thirds thereof in the Indonesian Province of Aceh), sending physical and psychological shock waves around the planet. In addition to being highly fatal, the event caused massive destruction of housing and infrastructure and the displacement of over 10 million people. Compared to other disasters of similar magnitude, responsiveness of the international community was fast and aid donations were copious (more than 10 billion US$; Wikipedia 2010). In the jargon of some NGO workers and consultants the “second wave” soon came to mean the initial flow of aid money; however, necessities and the efficiency and distribution of aid differed significantly between regions, and the attention of the donor community soon turned away to other priorities. After the disaster, many NGO’s involved in conservation activities were quick to find explanations: according to them the impacts of the giant waves were much increased where coastal ecosystems had been destroyed or damaged, e.g. in areas where mangroves had been replaced by shrimp farms. “Building back better” was a guiding theme for