The
flood crises in Sri Lanka and Australia
15
January 2011
Severe flooding in Sri Lanka and
Australia, caused by the same regional La Niña weather pattern, has had
devastating consequences in both countries. More than a million people have
been affected by the floods triggered by torrential rains in Sri Lanka, particularly
in the eastern districts of Batticaloa and Ampara. In Australia, thousands of people
have had their homes inundated by flood waters, especially in the north-eastern
state of Queensland and its capital, Brisbane.
At first sight, the circumstances seem
quite different. Sri Lanka is an economically backward country that has
suffered a quarter century of communal war, and a destructive tsunami in
December 2004, and lacks very basic infrastructure. Australia is a large
developed economy, with modern facilities and access to sophisticated
technology.
However, in both countries,
governments have proven utterly incapable of forewarning and protecting
ordinary people from major, yet predictable, adverse weather events. While
natural forces of such scope and strength cannot be completely controlled,
their social and economic impact has been vastly compounded by the
subordination of every aspect of life, including land management, town
planning, water supply and emergency services, to the dictates of corporate profit.
There are crucial common features:
government spending cuts, poor or decaying infrastructure, the privatisation or
commercialisation of basic services, profit-driven land and real estate
development, inadequate emergency services and pitiful levels of official
relief and compensation for flood victims. These are not simply the result of
indifference and neglect, but flow from definite decisions made in the
interests of the business elites.
The social consequences are more
glaring in Sri Lanka because of the dire poverty of many of the victims, the
lack of elementary preventative measures and infrastructure, and the massive
diversion of resources by successive governments into the communal war against
the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). Many of the 350,000
people forced to leave their homes and live in ill-prepared evacuation camps
were also displaced during the 25-year war and the 2004 tsunami. Some of the
squalid camps have become flooded themselves, forcing people to flee again. Poorly-maintained
reservoirs have burst their banks, deluging farms. Most of the 23
officially-recorded deaths have resulted from mudslides, usually caused by
deforestation and the building of houses on the sides of hills, due to the lack
of land and proper government planning. The government’s disaster plan
basically consists of sending the army back to areas where two or three years
ago it was indiscriminately shelling LTTE strongholds, killing hundreds, if not
thousands, of Tamil civilians.
Yet what has happened in Australia
since the flood crisis began in mid-December is in many ways more revealing.
Despite the availability of advanced technology and telecommunications,
ordinary citizens have been left to face the elements without proper warnings,
and with scant assistance, except from volunteers. Large portions of the
riverside suburbs of Brisbane, the country’s third largest city, a major
metropolis with more than two million people, have been inundated. Cities,
towns and small communities across Queensland and in some other states have
either been flooded or cut off by floodwaters for days. Major mines, factories,
roads, railways, ports and airports have been paralysed, at great economic and
social cost.
There have been terrible scenes of
people being swept away by flash floods, or pleading helplessly from car and
house roofs for rescue, or forced to abandon their homes without possessions at
the last minute. Evidence has emerged that governments have for years ignored
and suppressed reports and warnings by meteorologists and engineers about dams
that cannot withstand maximum floods, unchecked property development in
flood-prone areas and cutbacks to flood mitigation programs. Decisions have
been dominated by the drive to boost investors’ profits, including the
transformation of the south-east Queensland agency responsible for dams, water
supply and flood mitigation into a commercially-operated, money-making
corporation.
By any objective measure, this
represents a monumental failure of government and the current economic system.
Flooding is still continuing in various parts of the country, and more is
likely before the four-month wet season ends. The social and economic costs
will be immense as people try to rebuild their lives. Numerous homes and small
businesses are not covered for flood insurance, which most insurers either
refuse to provide or only offer as an expensive optional extra. Given the
paltry character of government grants, many people, as in Sri Lanka, will be
struggling to recover by relying their own resources and the generosity of
friends, relatives and volunteer services.
The Australian Labor government of
Prime Minister Julia Gillard, like its Sri Lankan counterpart headed by
President Mahinda Rajapakse, has declared that any reconstruction spending will
have to be offset by other government cuts. Gillard has insisted that her
pledge to the financial markets to eliminate the post-2008 budget deficit by
2013 will still be met, warning that “tough choices” will be involved.
Rajapakse is committed to meeting the demand of the International Monetary Fund
for a halving of the 2009 budget deficit by 2012. In both countries, for all
the official talk of “national unity” and “pulling together,” this means
imposing the burden of the floods crisis directly onto the backs of working
people.
These issues are by no means
confined to Sri Lanka and Australia. More than 500 people have been killed this
week by flooding and mudslides in mountainous areas near Rio de Janeiro in south-eastern
Brazil, where governments had failed to properly control construction. Floods
and unusually cold weather have caused havoc across Europe and North America in
recent weeks. Millions of destitute people in Pakistan and Haiti are still
waiting in vain for relief and rebuilding assistance following floods and
earthquakes in 2010.
These are symptoms of a decrepit
economic and social order, increasingly unable to provide even the most basic
protections and services to ordinary people. Having bailed out the banks and
finance houses that caused the global financial meltdown that began in 2008,
governments around the world, including those in Sri Lanka and Australia, are
now imposing austerity measures that will only worsen the situation. For
humanity to find a way forward, a new revolutionary socialist leadership is
required, one capable of implementing a globally-coordinated program to
reconstruct society completely along rationally planned, democratic and
egalitarian lines, harnessing all the scientific and technological resources
now available to avert and manage the worst effects of extreme natural events.
Mike Head
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