Some experts believe, the 2004 tsunami could have engulfed fewer lives, had the coasts been protected by dense coastal forests! But, how true is it?
Marine biologist Andrew Baird of James Cook University in Townsville, Queensland, Australia, challenges this most received idea. He says,
Bad science is being used to drive bad policy… And that policy is resulting in the large-scale dispossession of some of the poorest people on the planet.
The notion was that the a fairer section of tens of thousands of people who have died in the fury would have not, if coasts had been protected by mangrove and other types of dense coastal forest making them ‘buffer zones’ around south-east Asia.
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Via: New Scientist