Examining the storm protection services of mangroves of Orissa during the 1999 cyclone – A special article in EPW

These ecosystems provide a bunch of direct and indirect services to humankind. This special article in Economic and Political Weekly (EPW) by Saudamini Das examines whether the mangrove forests in Kendrapada district of Orissa played any protective role during the severe cyclone that hit the state in October 1999. 

Using data on human casualties and damages suffered by the houses as dependent variables, and different meteorological, geophysical and socio-economic factors as independent variables, this study estimates a cyclone damage function to bring out the mitigating effects of the mangrove vegetation.

The results show that mangroves did significantly reduce the occurrence of human deaths and the extent of damage to residential houses. Areas with mangrove protection are seen as having fewer fully collapsed houses and more partially collapsed houses. They are also found to have been more effective in reducing deaths than in reducing the damages to static properties.

Conclusion and policy implications

The protective role of coastal forests, particularly mangroves, has remained under-researched and this paper addresses this shortfall by looking at the role of the mangrove forest of Orissa. The work analyses human casualties and the damage to static properties like residential houses witnessed in Kendrapada district during the cyclone of October 1999.

The impact of mangroves on the above damages caused by both cyclonic wind and storm surge are analysed, and by controlling for the socio-economic and geophysical features a disaggregated picture of the storm protection services of mangroves is obtained. The existence of mangrove forests was found to have reduced human casualties significantly during this cyclone and this result was robust.

In contrast to popular belief, all poor people were not found equally vulnerable during the cyclone and we expect the security and certainty of sources of livelihood to have influenced their exposure to the cyclone. Mangroves also seem to have reduced house damages, at least, by converting a likely full collapse of houses to only partial collapse. In general, the protective role of mangrove forests was found to be more effective in reducing deaths than in reducing the damages to static properties like houses as observed from the elasticity.

Kendrapada district is one of the most cyclone-prone areas of peninsular India, and is highly vulnerable to disaster due to high population density and sallow bathymetry. Thus protection of the existing mangroves should be a priority, given their protective services and an expected increase in high intensity cyclones due to climate change.

Download the special article here -