The tsunami has a long lasting human toll; less recognized is the toll on natural resources. In Aceh, Indonesia, building progress for temporary housing has stalled because of a shortage of wood, according to a Financial Times article last week. Reconstruction depends on lumber sourced from foreign countries, instead of using domestic trees from Gunung Leuser National Park, where illegal logging is already threatening the ecology of the rainforest.
There are 67,000 people still living in tents and apparently "only 800 of the planned 20,000", temporary homes are finished in Aceh. The tsunami destroyed hundreds of thousands of across Southeast Asia, and estimated 120,000 on Aceh needed to be rebuilt.
Following the disaster there was quite a lot of media coverage focused on the outpouring of support for rebuilding. For those that lost track of the reconstruction progress in Indonesia, awash as we were with Katrina and the aftermath of the earthquake in Kashmir, reports about the slow pace might be a surprise. Weren't there hundreds of proposals for sustainable, affordable, geographically appropriate housing?
At one time, it seemed like arrangements for temporary shelter would emerge from the many proposals highlighted in the media. There is the Harvard/MIT "Sri Lankan house", that is economical as well as "built with local materials and engineered to withstand a tsunami". There are the Architecture for Humanities' structures, designed specifically for use in India and Sri Lanka. There is World Vision's project of 139 houses that they not ed in a press release were "lauded as 'best practice' in post-tsunami rebuilding". There were several more low-cost options featured on NPR including houses framed with cheap, flexible, strong bamboo. There was also press about architectureal wunderkind Daniel Libeskind, who worked pro bono to rebuild a town in Sri Lanka. It seemed like a plethora of architecturally innovative ideas from universities and architects for sustainable projects and innovative solutions.
Yet despite the apparent potential for success, a persistent source of consternation has been the materials with which the houses will be built. There was concern that the environmentally important forests of Aceh would be destroyed in the rebuilding. Concrete used in many places is not a sound seismic choice. Steel and tin, which were actually used for temporary shelters in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, make oven-like structures that are inappropriate for the climate.
Solutions poured in, but it seems that wood was chosen, despite what seems to be availability of alternative resources. Conservation International wrote how they had successfully advocated for the use of foreign wood rather then Indonesian trees. British Columbia wooed Indonesia with their ideas of wooden prefabricated homes, cut from Canadian forests, shipped to Aceh, then trucked to villages and assembled. By May of 2005, donations had been offered from US, Australia, Belgium, Finland, Sweden, New Zealand, Germany, and Denmark. But FT writes that getting timber from places like Canada has been problematic because of shifting environmental standards and the "inexperience of many aid agencies in sourcing large amounts of wood.", but "a UK-based timber broker was expected in coming weeks."
This wouldn't be a surprise for some citizens of the areas hit. Six months after the crisis, many areas had already tired of the slow, spurious progress. In India the Habitat for Humanity proposed a certain model of house for Tamil Nadu. Prompted for a reaction when shown "the little cardboard house model", a lady of Killai commented:
"People have been here before talking about houses; now they are gone. You are here now, but how do I know you will come again?"
In addition to the challenges of sourcing timber from far flung places such as Canada and Sweden, organizations must also get clearance from the bureacratic government. Many NGO's seem to have neat press-ready plans to show, but scaling those and coordinating all the agencies to meet the epic challenge of the massive reconstruction effort of the tsunami has been a rough road.
It seems as though the challenge of affordable, sturdy emergency housing has been solved many times through innovative teams of architects, at universities and via the dedication of non-profits and lots of generous support. Not only is thatnot the case, the problem has been historically unresolvable. An article in Slate last year described the issue:
"Architects in the past have proposed a variety of ingenious shelters, including prefabs, inflatables, geodesic dome kits, sprayed polyurethane igloos, and temporary housing made of cardboard tubes and plastic beer crates. As Davis [the author refers to Ian Davis, who wrote the book Shelter After Disaster (1978)], points out, not only are these often untested 'universal' solutions generally prohibitively expensive, their exotic forms are usually ill-suited to local conditions. That may be why such shelters, when they have been deployed, have frequently been rejected by users, and why historically the most common temporary shelter is the tent. Emergency housing sounds compelling, but it almost never works."
Housing is not the only rebuilding issue. Aid organzizations are overseeing the rebuilding of thousands of boats that were also destroyed in the tsunami. There are issues with the size and technology of the boats being built; many are smaller than the larger trawlers they are replacing, which may lead to over-fishing in shallow waters. The boats are also apparently made of unseasoned wood, because of the timber shortage, which is far less seaworthy the seasoned wood. Though many of the problems are expected given the scope of the disaster, life nevertheless remains on hold for thousands of Indonesians on Aceh still living in "rotting" tents while agents track down millions of cubic feet of lumber half a world away.
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