Japan tsunami recovery must tackle environmental issues

By Charles Kelly

The dramatic news coming out of Japan in the aftermath of the earthquake, tsunami and ongoing nuclear crisis at the Fukushima Daiichi power plant may draw attention to the immediacy of the heartbreaking situation at the expense of the near and long term. 

The combination of these emergencies is having an enormous impact on Japan, with indirect but significant effects far beyond the immediate disaster zone.

Relief efforts by the survivors themselves, the government and other organisations are ramping up quickly, and should meet most of the critical needs soon. This will be a lot of work, involving many people and considerable resources, but the aid response will ultimately be successful. 

It is also necessary to start thinking about recovery now. The well-documented but often unlearned lesson is that recovery planning needs to start at the same time as relief efforts. 

Short- and long-term recovery needs to be planned and executed in a consistent and coordinated fashion. Media reports indicate that earthquake survivors have in fact begun the recovery process. 

Their efforts need to be matched with appropriate and realistic recovery policies, plans and assistance. And clearly, these need to include disaster risk reduction.

Environmental protection

In the case of this crisis, considering the environment will be key to enabling the disaster survivors to get back on their feet.

The three disasters have caused considerable damage to the environment. Unless this is remediated or mitigated, life in the affected areas cannot return to normal, nor move to a more disaster-resilient environment in the future.

The way the environment was used before the crisis placed a considerable number of people in danger once the earthquake-generated tsunami occurred. This is evident in the damage to urban areas in coastal zones and at river mouths, but also in the location of industry (most notably the Fukushima nuclear facilities) and critical infrastructure such as Sendai airport).  

The challenge in the recovery process will be to define practical ways for the environment to provide protection, rather than accentuating vulnerabilities and hazards.

Physical reconstruction - from building new homes and factories to repairing roads - will lead to a rate of extraction of natural resources that will seek to replace in two to three years what has taken decades to construct. 

There will most certainly be a mini-economic boom as a result of the recovery operation. But this should not lead to unsustainable resource extraction and manufacturing, and further damage to Japan's environment. 

The recovery process after a disaster provides an opportunity to build back safer and more sustainably: safer by using the environment as a way to reduce seismic and other hazards like flooding and landslides; and sustainably through environmentally sound spatial planning and sustainable use of building materials and water, to name a few.  

Re-using debris

At a more practical level, it is clear that recovery efforts will need to manage a considerable amount of debris, recycling as much as possible. Re-using debris will reduce the demand for additional resources and the need to use limited space on Honshu island for landfill.

Environmental monitoring needs to be transparent and respond to both scientific and social concerns about radionuclide and other sources of contamination, such as the impact of polluted run-off on ocean fish stocks. 

If agricultural and other locally-produced goods cannot be verified as safe, then the economy of the affected areas will not recover. A process for certifying the safety of products and providing clear and understandable health information on dust and radiation impacts - as well as mitigation measures - should be put in place.   

There are a range of assessment and planning tools available to ensure that environmental issues can be incorporated into the recovery process. Japan should take advantage of these with the aim of ensuring a more effective and sustainable recovery from this extraordinary set of disasters.