Last year, Rory Spowers, author of Rising Tides’ and founder and editor of The Web of Hope, moved to Galle, in South Western Sri Lanka, to set up home with his wife and two young sons. He describes their immediate experiences after December’s Tsunami struck the very region that they had chosen to make their home for the future.

We had moved into our house one week before. After six months in houses within the ramparts of Galle Fort, the renovation of the house we had just rented for ten years was nearly complete. For the first time in seven years, my wife and I had all of our belongings in one place. The hallway was stacked with boxes, ready to be unpacked as we finally installed our family into our dream home’.

To begin with, being four kilometres inland and perched on a small hill, we had no idea anything had happened. A text message came in from a friend, asking if we were OK’ and saying that she and some others were safe and high at Wijaya beach’, where virtually everyone we know in the area, had been celebrating Christmas only hours before. Initially, we understood this to mean that celebrations had extended through the night and the party was still going.

The reality soon started to strike home. First the power went down, then the sirens started, followed by heli-copters, turning into a steady stream of traffic for the next few days, since our location is just 200 metres from the main hospital for the south of the island. The landlines and mobile phone network were down. Without TV, or internet access, we turned to the car radio. Builders gathered round and translated as news came in of rising sea levels from Trincomalee in the north-east to Batticaloa, Pottuvil and Arugam Bay on the east coast, then Hambantota, Tangalle and Galle in the south, followed by Hikkaduwa, Bentota and Kalutara on the west. Knowing that we had virtually no petrol in the car, I set out with my three-year-old son to fill up at the near-est pumps, just quarter of a mile away.

By the time we hit the junction by the hospital, it was clear that something huge had occurred. The road was in chaos and an impenetrable queue had already developed around the petrol station. I turned round and went back to the house, the sound of helicopters above the palm trees already creating the air of a war zone, reminiscent of the opening scenes of Apocalypse Now.

For all of us touched by this tragedy, the ironies continue to mount. After 20 years of civil war, Sri Lanka was poised on the edge of a new era. Tourism in the south of the island was booming, with more bookings than ever and the mood buoyant among all those associated with the industry. Apart from a small but vocal minority within the politically volatile south, people were looking forward to a time of peace and prosperity.

For me personally, the ironies are stark. Part of what had propelled me to bring my family to Sri Lanka was the belief that the island offered some of the greatest security against what I perceived as the most daunting global threats of our time. After ten years of working as a writer and researcher in the environmental arena, the greatest concerns I had for my sons’ future were issues like global warming and bio-diversity loss. With the greatest degree of biodiversity of any country of its’ size in the world, I saw Sri Lanka’s natural immune system as relatively intact. My last book, Rising Tides, was a history of ecological thought and singled out sea level rises as the greatest threat facing the globe over the next 20 years. Bizarrely, I had given a copy of the book to a friend the night before, who was swept from his bed in a beachfront cabana only hours later by the tsunami.

While looking at land and houses in the south of the island, my primary con-sideration was always to look at how this property would be affected by a sea level rise of say two or three metres over the coming decades. Of course, I had never expected such a phenomenon to occur over night and, to begin with, I knew of no correlation between the tsunami and global warming. However, although it has hardly been reported in the mainstream media, there is now some evidence that rapidly melting ice in Antarctica has affected the pressure on the tectonic plate system. This theory is supported by the fact that a smaller quake was observed on 24th December 2004 between Tasmania and Macquarie Island, on the opposite side of the plate from the epicentre of the Big One’. So, although it may be right to say that geological upheavals of this kind have happened throughout history, there is the possibility that the geo-physical changes we are seeing now can be attributed to anthropogenic, or man-made emissions, destabilising the climate and the very foundations of the globe. In terms of a root cause, the massive increases in greenhouse gases in the earth’s atmosphere since the Industrial Revolution could be providing the catalyst for chain reactions, or positive feedback loops’, which feed on them-selves and thereby accelerate disruption of the global climate and now, possibly even the system of tectonic plates which formed the world map as we know it.

Ten days after the event we returned home to Galle. An inspirational relief effort is already underway. For all of us though, especially those with young children, the risk of disease epidemics weighs heavily. Three local initiatives run by friends of ours will now be the focus of our energy. Jack Eden and Robert Drummond started a charitable association here three years ago, Friends of the South, and are already raising substantial sums in the UK and elsewhere for community and grass-roots projects. Project Galle 2005 is a more immediate effort started by a young group, co-ordinating the distri-bution of aid to about 20 camps in the Galle area. Lanka Real Aid has developed as an extension of Lanka Real Estate, a local property company who started the Ulpotha Sanctuary, a yoga retreat in the centre of the island, where they have rehabilitated ancient irrigation networks, initiated reforestation schemes and de-veloped sustainable agriculture systems. With their charitable arm, the East Pole Foundation, energy will be directed prim-arily to some of the worst affected areas.

The Web of Hope, a UK registered charity and online database of role models for positive change, which I founded three years ago, is also launching a UK appeal to direct funds to all three of these projects. The Web of Hope high-lights any initiative, project, mechanism or technology which is a proven success, from a grass-roots community level through to corporate and global govern-ance, offering them as inspiration for others struggling with similar challenges.

In the longer term, we are devoting much of our time and energy to de-veloping the Web of Hope’s eco-village and learning centre about 20 kilometres inland, where we are rehabilitating a 60 acres tea estate, planting organic paddy fields and starting some agro-forestry schemes to intercrop a wide variety of fruits, vegetables and medicinal herbs. Although I hate to sound alarmist, we have to make provision for the fact that this may not be an isolated incident, but merely sets the precedent for what might be in store for us, not only here in Sri Lanka but in other parts of the globe as well, as we move deeper into what many see as the defining decade of human history. On a more positive note, there is a widespread belief that the enormity of this tragedy could overcome the inherent jealousies and divisions within Sri Lankan society, bonding previously conflicting groups and ulti-mately moving the country to a new level of unity. Let us hope so.

Rory Spowers is author of Rising Tides ñ the history and future of the environmental movement’ published by Canongate. He is Founder/Editor of The Web of Hope’, the world’s first online resource of best practice role models for sustainability.

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