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Scandinavian Journal of Hospitality
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Tourism and Land Grab in the
Aftermath of the Indian Ocean
Tsunami
Erik Cohen a
a The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Jerusalem, Israel
Available online: 22 Sep 2011
To cite this article: Erik Cohen (2011): Tourism and Land Grab in the Aftermath of the Indian
Ocean Tsunami, Scandinavian Journal of Hospitality and Tourism, 11:3, 224-236
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Tourism and Land Grab in the Aftermath
of the Indian Ocean Tsunami
ERIK COHEN
The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Jerusalem, Israel
ABSTRACT The devastation left behind after the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami in the coastal
areas of South and Southeast Asia led to numerous attempts at “land grab”, the displacement
by powerful individuals and authorities of the weaker groups of local inhabitants from their
land, in order to re-allocate it to tourism development. Such manifestations of “disaster
capitalism” have been rarely noted in the extensive mainstream literature on the
consequences of the tsunami, and on the various rehabilitation and reconstruction plans and
projects for the affected areas. This article distinguishes between two manifestations of that
phenomenon, “predatory land grab” and “strategic land grab”, which differ in their scale,
the nature of the perpetrating agents, and their techniques of dispossession. It focuses on three
Asian countries, Thailand, India and Sri Lanka, and discusses the relative incidence of the two
forms of attempted land grab, the resistance which they provoked, and the extent of their
success or failure. This paper draws attention to the need to protect and assist the weaker
social groups in disaster situations which, though not physically harmed, might be victimized
by aggressive “disaster capitalist” projects in the destabilized aftermath of a major disaster.
KEY WORDS: Beach tourism development, disaster capitalism, Indian Ocean tsunami, land grab
Introduction
In an insightful article, Naomi Klein in 2005 argued that “Disaster...is the new terra
nullius”, offering “a chance to grab hold of ‘the terrible bareness’ [left by the destruc-
tion]...and fill it with the most perfect, beautiful plans [of reconstruction]”. However,
“the reconstruction industry”, made up of “for-profit consulting firms, engineering
companies, mega-NGOs, government and UN aid agencies and international financial
institutions” proved “stunningly inept at rebuilding” the areas affected by major disas-
ters, like those destroyed by the 2004 Asian tsunami. Klein speculated that the reason
for that ineptness might be that “rebuilding is not [the] primary purpose” of the “recon-
struction industry”. Quoting the remark of an Indian researcher, Shalmani Guttal, to the
effect that “It’s not reconstruction at all – it’s about reshaping everything”, Klein put
forward the claim that the apparent failures of the reconstruction efforts following a
Correspondence Address: Erik Cohen, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Jerusalem, Israel. E-mail:
mserik@mscc.huji.ac.il
Scandinavian Journal of Hospitality and Tourism,
Vol. 11, No. 3, 224– 236, October 2011
1502-2250 Print/1502-2269 Online/11/030224– 13 #2011 Taylor & Francis
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/15022250.2011.593359
Downloaded by [Erik Cohen] at 02:17 22 September 2011
major disaster in fact mask a “deeper scandal: the rise of a predatory form of disaster
capitalism that uses the desperation and fear created by catastrophe to engage in
radical social and economic engineering. And on this front, the reconstruction industry
works so quickly and efficiently that the privatizations and land grabs are usually
locked in before the local population knows what hit them” (Klein, 2005). Klein’s
concept of “disaster capitalism” was further elucidated in Gunewardena and Schuller’s
(2008) recent collection of papers, critical of the neoliberal strategies in disaster recon-
struction. According to Schuller’s definition, disaster capitalism consists of “National
and transnational governmental institutions’ instrumental use of catastrophe...to
promote and empower a range of neoliberal capitalist interests” (Schuller, 2008,
p. 20); as a consequence of such use “public institutions’ funding streams [for recon-
struction] are increasingly directed toward private entities, including transnational cor-
porations, eroding humanitarian principles [of disaster relief]” (Schuller, 2008, p. 20,
emphasis in the original).
Tourism studies have devoted little attention to the interface of tourism and disaster.
Insofar as this topic was studied, the principal concern of the authors was with the dis-
aster’s consequences for tourism and the industry’s management responses (e.g. Faul-
kner, 2001; Ritchie, 2004); the literature has been virtually silent on the influence and
role of tourism in post-disaster conflicts regarding such matters as the reconstruction or
re-development of affected areas. This is the principal concern of the present article.
This paper deploys the concept of “disaster capitalism” for the analysis of the impact
of tourism-related interests on land conflicts following the Indian Ocean tsunami. These
interests focused primarily on the littoral (coastal) areas of the affected countries, and
specifically on the beaches destroyed by the giant waves, and involved attempts at the
dispossession and relocation of pre-tsunami inhabitants, to clear the beaches for future
tourism development.
Tourism Concern, a pressure group seeking to protect local peoples’ interests in areas
affected by tourism development, “was the first to reveal back in October 2005 that it
was very likely that people would be doubly displaced, first by the tsunami and then by
opportunistic tourism development” (Sustainable Travel, 2006). Such post-tsunami
displacement was perceived as “the second tsunami” by some of its victims (de
Vries, 2005; Klein, 2005), and has been commonly vilified as “land grab” by critical
observers.
The voluminous mainstream literature on the tsunami, published by governmental
agencies, international organizations and researchers in many disciplines, took scarce
notice of the widespread land grab on coastal areas of several Asian countries. That lit-
erature documents the geological sources and the physical effects of the tsunami and the
medical and psychological state of the survivors, reports on the various rescue, relief
and recovery operations by governments and other bodies and offers various models
for the optimization of the rehabilitation and reconstruction efforts. But that literature
mostly lacks a critical angle. In particular, the interests and ulterior purposes of
broadly conceived plans for the rehabilitation of affected coastal areas remain unno-
ticed, as do smaller scale efforts of powerful outsiders to appropriate the affected lands.
This paper will examine the facilitating circumstances, the means deployed, the
struggles involved, and the consequences of different manifestations of tourism-
related land grab on the coastal regions of three tsunami-affected Asian countries:
Tourism and Land Grab after the Indian Ocean Tsunami 225
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Thailand, India and Sri Lanka. I will show how the vulnerability of economically and
politically marginal populations, often the people most seriously affected by the disas-
ter, significantly increased in the unsettled circumstances following the disaster, and
facilitated their exploitation by powerful outsider interests.
The events discussed are recent, and have not yet been thoroughly studied in the
social scientific literature; this comparative study is therefore based on available sec-
ondary sources, primarily academic and professional studies, policy-related reports,
and accounts in the local and international media. I am well acquainted from previous
research with one affected area, the Andaman coast of southern Thailand, but have no
personal experience in the other two areas.
For the purposes of the following discussion, I make an analytical distinction
between two varieties of land grab attempts, differing in scope, the nature of the perpe-
trating agents, and in their techniques of dispossession: “predatory” and “strategic” land
grab. In “predatory land grab” private persons or companies seek to exploit a disaster to
avail themselves of the victims’ land either by eviction or purchase under duress. As
Leonard (2007, p. 57) observed regarding the Asian region: “Within days [of the dis-
aster] the ‘opportunity’ was identified. Where communities were still in shock and
bereavement...investors came from nowhere to register land ownership claims”. Pred-
atory land grab involves discrete conflicts between private entrepreneurs and the occu-
pants of particular land holdings. In contrast, “strategic land grab” involves the forced
removal of whole communities form their land by national or local authorities, by
means of official ordinances and rehabilitation plans, with a view of future development
of the vacated land, primarily for tourism projects. To quote Leonard (2007, p. 57)
again: “Bogus civil projects and illegal zoning plans were simply invented as pretexts
for preventing villagers from rebuilding their homes in their original high-value loca-
tion...Fishing communities...were being faced with eviction from their ravaged land
through open legal processes referred to simply as development, and relocated to
new sites, often remote from the sources of their livelihood”. Leonard (2007, p. 62)
asserts that such “relocation...represents government-sponsored land grabbing”.
Background
In many Asian countries, coastal areas have in the past been considered of little value,
because they were unsuited for growing crops. Consequently, they became marginal in
several respects: geographically remote from major population centers; economically of
little value; and socially looked down on, since they were inhabited by low class, often
minority or tribal people, who eked out their livelihood from the sea. One important
consequence of this state of affairs was that the issue of land tenure and ownership
of coastal land often remained unsettled for long periods of time. People occupied
undisturbed land, but did not always formally own it. Hundreds of fishing villages
along the shores of the mainland and on off-shore islands had often occupied the
land, without legally recognized ownership rights. In recent times, once a coastal
area became attractive to outsiders, especially to tourism developers, the occupancy
of the land by its inhabitants was put into question. As Shaun Williams states in a dis-
cussion of the pre-tsunami property rights prevailing in the affected coastal areas:
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The regulation of property rights within the inter-tidal zone is always a jurisdic-
tional quagmire – as between federal and state/provincial authorities and
between various local governments and customary or traditional authorities
(Williams, 2006, p. 11).
Williams makes an important point regarding the “emergent” nature of land tenure
rights:
In social terms, the most important tenures in any society are the weakest,
because they are the rights most commonly afforded by the poor, who are
usually the most numerous. The weakest form of tenure is none, when no
one has given an occupant permission of any kind...to remain in occupancy.
However, even these trespassers have superior rights to latecomers, and, over
time, through a process known as prescription, they can even acquire rights
against those with superior rights to themselves, such as owners or tenants
(Williams, 2006, p. 12).
Whatever rights the poor might enjoy can be relatively successfully defended as long
as they are in actual occupancy of the land. Once they are forced to leave by war,
political disturbances, or, as in the case of the tsunami, a natural catastrophe, their
ability to defend those rights is significantly diminished.
Rights in landed property are normally sanctioned by the state in deeds and titles,
but such procedures have been rare in the tsunami-affected zone (Williams, 2006,
p. 12). Moreover, “in many cases where deeds to property had been registered,
they are likely to be in the name of people who have passed away”, hence the
identity of the current rights holder can only be established by reference to “duly
attested...documentary evidence of death and subsequent inheritance” (Williams,
2006, p. 12).
Williams (2006, p. 12) points out that, “Many parcels along the coast affected by the
tsunami would have been demarcated by natural features, such as trees and paths”
which might have served as evidence of the (informal) division of the land among
its occupants. However, even as in the wake of the tsunami, “[T]he littoral space
is... highly sought after, both by local users and by investors...the sweeping away
of existing symbols and evidence of historically enjoyed rights of possession, the
major form of tenure security of the poor, is likely to rekindle old disputes and
create new ones” (Williams, 2006, p. 13).
In such disputes, the displaced occupants of the land are at a marked disadvantage:
they have slight evidence of their occupancy rights, often enjoy little protection from
the authorities, and lack the means (or cultural capital) to hire competent lawyers to
defend them against aggressive and powerful outsider land-grabbers.
The tenure patterns characteristic of the tsunami-affected areas of the three countries
(and within each of them) differed according to their diverse historical trajectories;
these created perspicuous and settled tenure patterns in some areas, and moot and
intractable ones in others. These differences have affected the motivations and
chances of success of land-grabbing attempts, once the tsunami displaced the occupants
from their land.
Tourism and Land Grab after the Indian Ocean Tsunami 227
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The Indian Ocean Tsunami
The tsunami of 26 December 2004 was a major disaster, which has affected a dozen
countries in Southeast and South Asia and Eastern Africa, killed about 250,000
people and destroyed hundreds of kilometers of littoral lands, up to a width of
several kilometers. The most affected area was the province of Aceh on Sumatra in
Indonesia; but the three countries of concern here also suffered huge losses in life
and property.
Thailand
In Thailand there were about 5,400 dead and 2,800 missing (and presumed dead)
(Cohen, 2008, p. 25) in six provinces along the coast of the Andaman Sea, in a
region stretching from Ranong province in the North to Satun province in the South.
Three tourist areas within that region were particularly severely affected: the long
Khao Lak beach in Phang Nga province, the Phuket island province, and the Phi Phi
islands in Krabi province (Cohen, 2008).
Sri Lanka
In Sri Lanka there were about 35,000 dead, 5000 missing, 20,000 injured and about
500,000 displaced, along about 1400 kilometers of the island’s coastline (Ratnasooriya
et al., 2007, pp. 21– 22).
India
In India there were about 12,405 dead, 5,640 missing, 516,150 displaced, along about
2,260 kilometers of coastline, stretching from West Bengal in the Northeast to Tamil
Nadu in the South of the country (Wikipedia, n.d.).
The huge waves swept away whole coastal villages and resort complexes and
damaged hundreds of others. While the international press reported disproportionately
on the destruction and loss of life in the tourist areas, particularly in Thailand, the dis-
aster’s principal impact was on the local population and its settlements. Moreover,
while tourists, dead or alive, enjoyed preferential treatment (Cohen, 2009), for the sur-
viving locals the tsunami was frequently only the beginning of a prolonged period of
suffering.
I have dealt extensively with tourism and the tsunami in Thailand in previous pub-
lications (i.e. Cohen, 2008, 2009), and possess the most detailed data on the land grab in
that country; my information on India and Sri Lanka is less comprehensive, but suffi-
cient for a comparison of the land grab problems in the three countries.
Land Grab in Thailand
Predatory Land Grab
As the tsunami struck the Andaman coast of Thailand, the surviving inhabitants of the
affected littoral settlements fled inland, leaving behind whatever was left of their
228 E. Cohen
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property. There they eventually ended up in what had been intended as temporary
shelters. The separation of the people from their land opened the way for attempts at
“predatory land grabs”.
The three areas most affected by the tsunami differed considerably in the prevailing
pre-tsunami land tenure patterns. On Phuket the land rights were well-documented.
The island “was comprehensively titled in the early stages of the Thailand Land
Titling Project...and duplicate records were held centrally” (Williams, 2006, p. 14).
There were therefore few chances for attempted land grabs on the island to succeed.
The Phi Phi islands are part of the Nopparat-Thara – Phi Phi Marine National Park,
and their land is therefore nominally unalienable from the state. The tenure of the
Muslim fishermen who lived on the island prior to the coming of tourism, and the
owners of the many tourist businesses was therefore tenuous in the pre-tsunami
period; however, there would have been little point in private land-grab attempts
after the tsunami, because the usurpers could not obtain deeds on the grabbed
properties.
The tenure pattern along the mainland coast, and especially the long Khao Lak
beach, however, was unsettled, and offered attractive opportunities for land grab.
Much of the beach-land had in the past been concessioned to tin-mine owners. The
owners acquired usufruct rights on the land, but not full ownership rights (Hutasingh,
2005b). Once the tin deposits were exhausted, and the concessions expired, the
tin-mine owners remained in de facto possession of the land. However, they had lost
interest in the land: once the mines were closed down, there was no apparent use for
it – until the coming of tourism.
The Khao Lak coastal lands are unsuitable for agriculture, but the sea offers good
fishing grounds. Moken sea-hunters in the inter-tidal zone, popularly known as “Sea
Gypsies” (chao lae) (Ivanoff, 1997), put up their camps along the beaches. Malay
fishermen built their villages on the coast, and so did many of the Thai ex-employees
of the tin-mining companies. Those people have mostly been unaware of the formal
status of the land which they occupied, and apparently little concerned with obtaining
formal land tenure rights.
As beach-side tourism started to develop along the Khao Lak coast in the years
immediately preceding the tsunami, the tin-mine owners, and other individuals who
have by one way or another acquired deeds on coastal land, tried unsuccessfully to
evict the inhabitants from the land, on which they have laid claim. Conflicting
claims led to court cases, which dragged on before the tsunami struck (Pinkaew,
2005), but no changes in the occupation of the land had taken place.
Right after the tsunami, severe land right conflicts broke out in about 25– 40 coastal
villages between the purported land owners and the surviving inhabitants (Charoenpo,
2005a; Ekachai, 2005a; Hutasingh, 2005b), engendering a new crisis for the already
distraught villagers.
The purported landlords saw in the flight of the inhabitants a singular opportunity to
take possession of “their” land (Ekachai, 2005b). Starting on the day following the dis-
aster, the landlords began to fence off the claimed areas, to put up signs warning against
trespassing (Charoenpo, 2005a, photo in Raksakul, 2005), or to assign guards to the
fenced off plots (Ekachai, 2005a); in some instances they even prevented the inhabi-
tants from retrieving their dead (Hutasingh, 2005a). One Bangkok company, allegedly
Tourism and Land Grab after the Indian Ocean Tsunami 229
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owned by a powerful politician (Hutasingh, 2005a), put claims on about 5,000 rai
(1,250 acres) of land along the Andaman coastal strip (Bangkok Post, 2005a), including
a 700 rai (17.5 acres) site on Khao Lak beach (Hutasingh, 2005b), on which it intended
to establish a golf course and a luxurious hotel (Charoenpo, 2005a).
The people evicted by the company returned eventually to their village, despite the
threat posed by the guards, and reconstructed their homes there. But the authorities,
siding with the powerful company, refused any assistance, even denying them some
basic services, such as water and electricity supply (Samabuddhi, 2005).
The Thai government was reluctant to assist the evicted villagers in their confronta-
tion with the purported landlords. The then Prime Minister, Thaksin Shinawatra,
himself a wealthy businessman, has exerted considerable efforts to rehabilitate the
stricken region. But though a populist leader, Thaksin refused to take the side of the
villagers in their conflict with the company. He advised them not to be too “greedy”
(The Nation, 2005a), but to accept the company’s compromise proposal to settle in
houses provided by the company on an inland location (Bangkok Post, 2005a). At a
later date, Thaksin refused even to meet with the affected villagers in the course of a
visit to Phang Nga province (Samabuddhi, 2005).
There have been widespread allegations that many of the documents professed by the
landlords to prove land-ownership were fraudulent “flying deeds” (Bangkok Post,
2005b), obtained by collusion between investors and corrupt officials (Ekachai,
2005a; Charoenpo, 2005a). Speculators were believed to “exploit [the] ambiguity [in
tenure rights] by bribing officials to backdate land purchases, then accuse villagers
of encroaching” (Montlake, 2005).
The villagers complained to the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC),
which found that the landlords’ deeds were indeed issued illegally and that the residents
had legitimate rights to their land (The Nation, 2005b). A committee with the partici-
pation of the NHRC “recommended [that] the Land Department verify all title deeds
that were issued in the area”; however, “the Land Department failed to follow the
recommendations” (Kongrut, 2007). As villagers returned to their land, landowners,
trying to evict them, accused them of trespassing; the courts, taking the landowners’
deeds at their face value in absence of proofs of fraudulency, ruled against the villagers
(Kongrut, 2007).
As the land disputes drew on, the governmental authorities lent their support to the
landlords, arguing that the “new owners have every right to claim the land because they
came with legal land rights papers”. They “turned a blind eye to the villagers’ argument
that they lived on the land for decades, if not centuries”, thus becoming “instrumental in
evicting the people” (Tangwisutijit, 2007); while the people had no money to fight legal
battles with the landowners (Glahan, 2008), and faced the prospect of losing their land.
Strategic Land-Grab
Right after the tsunami disaster, the Thai local and national authorities generated a flood
of ideas, proposals and plans for the rehabilitation of the stricken areas. Some of these
were just vacuous pronouncements by politicians, intended to make them appear to
contribute to the reconstruction efforts (Cohen, 2008, p. 43); but others represented sub-
stantial programs to put tourism in those areas on a new footing. Such plans tacitly
230 E. Cohen
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implied the need to remove the population inhabiting the sites, suitable for tourist
development, and to relocate it to the interior.
Unlike in Sri Lanka and India, however, in Thailand no blanket attempts were made to
remove the affected coastal population a great distance into the interior, in the name of their
safety. Governmental regulations stipulated merely that no construction would be permitted
on land less than 30 meters from the sea. But while the government did not seek to restruc-
ture land ownership patterns in the stricken region as a whole, it sought to remove squatters,
who occupied land in protected areas, such as national parks; many of these built
small tourist establishments in attractive locations. However, such conflicts between the
governmental authorities and the squatters have been relatively quickly resolved.
Explicit attempts at strategic land grabs were made primarily by some local auth-
orities and a tourism development agency created by the government to spur up
tourism development. Such attempts were in several instances deployed against the
weakest and most underprivileged inhabitants of the coastal region – the Moken
“Sea Gypsies”. Denied Thai citizenship, the Moken are poor and illiterate; until the
tsunami struck, those in remote areas derived their livelihood from fishing (more
exactly, hunting) in the inter-tidal zone. They have lived on the Andaman coastal
region for a very long time, but were never granted rights to the land they occupied.
After the tsunami, the Moken got involved in conflicts with private landowners, like
other inhabitants of the Khao Lak coast (Chuenniran, 2008). But they also became
victims of more comprehensive attempts by local authorities to remove their camps
from sea-side locations. A blatant example was an endeavor by a tambon (sub-district)
Administrative Organization, an elected public body, to relocate a Moken coastal camp
onto a new site, five kilometers inland, under the pretense that its land is needed for a
hospital (Sakboon, 2005, Wongruang, 2005) to be allegedly built with the support of
the German government; this claim turned out to be completely fraudulent (Montlake,
2005). The Moken, however, refused to relocate; in retaliation, the local authorities cut
off all assistance to their settlement, though the people were destitute, because the
tsunami had destroyed their camp, boats and fishing equipment (Nanuam, 2005).
Another example is an order by the local Administrative Organization on the grow-
ingly popular resort island of Lanta, for another Moken band to leave its coastal camp
and relocate onto a mountain inland – ostensibly for its own safety from future tsunami
waves. But the Moken have suspected that the authorities coveted their land for tourism
development, and also refused to relocate (Wipatayotin, 2006).
Despite the Moken’s resilience to official attempts to separate them from their coastal
camps, other forms of encroachment came to threaten their traditional subsistence. Fol-
lowing the tsunami, the authorities banned fishing in protected marine areas (Chuen-
niran, 2008), while resort developers prevented the Moken from fishing along the
coast of their properties (Tangwisutijit, 2007).
Though the Phi Phi island group in Krabi province is part of a national marine park,
and hence nominally state property, in the period preceding the tsunami the main island,
Phi Phi Don, became a popular vacationing destination with backpackers and individ-
ual travelers. Around a Muslim fishermen village an unplanned jumble of mostly
simple, outsider-owned accommodations had sprung up; these were virtually swept
away by the tsunami. Realizing the considerable touristic potential of the strikingly
beautiful islands, the government seized the opportunity of the destruction wrought
Tourism and Land Grab after the Indian Ocean Tsunami 231
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by the tsunami, to attempt to regulate tourism on the island and develop it as a high-end
destination. It delegated the reconstruction and touristic development of the islands to
an agency, the Designated Area for Sustainable Tourism Development (DASTA),
which has been created by the Thaksin government for the rapid realization of
special tourism projects (Phanayanggoor, 2005). DASTA promptly stopped all
private reconstruction activities on Phi Phi Don (Charoenpo, 2005b), asking operators
of previously existing tourism businesses to wait for the completion of its master plan
for tourism development of the island (Charoenpo, 2005b). Sensing a “hidden agenda”,
intended to enable “business groups close to the government [to] seize tracts of land
ravaged by the tsunami for their own gain”, and to construct five-star resort hotels
on the island, the local business owners resisted DASTA’s ban, and demanded the
right to reconstruct their damaged businesses (Charoenpo, 2005c).
As DASTA failed to produce the plans, the government eventually gave in to
pressure, replaced the unpopular DASTA by other government agencies, and actually
gave up its plans to develop Phi Phi as a high-end destination (Jivananthaprawat, 2006).
The principal large-scale attempt at radically restructuring tourism in the stricken
Andaman region by a “strategic land grab” has thus completely failed.
Land Grab in India and Sri Lanka
Predatory Land Grab
Like in Thailand, many tsunami-affected coastal areas in both India and Sri Lanka were
before the disaster occupied by small-scale fishing communities (Leonard, 2007, p. 58).
In India, the inhabitants of some of the stricken villages were members of lowly, ex-
untouchables castes (Hedman, 2005, p. 4); in Sri Lanka, the tsunami struck particularly
hard the villages of the Muslim religious minority (Ranawana, 2005). Such socially and
politically weak groups became particularly vulnerable to exploitation in the wake of
the disaster.
More settled ownership patterns seem to have prevailed in Sri Lanka and India prior to
the tsunami than had been the case in some tsunami-affected areas in Thailand. This pre-
cluded the occurrence of attempted “predatory land grabs” during peaceful times.
However, as in Thailand, in areas suitable for tourism development such land grabs
appear to have become quite widespread in the period following the tsunami, though in
a different mode. It has been reported that in Sri Lanka, “Communities that have remained
on the coast are under increasing pressure to sell their land to developers. Plagued by debt,
declining fish catches and rising food prices, many families are falling prey to the hard-sell
tactics of real estate agents” (LankaNewspapers.com, 2009). The headman of a coastal
village in India’s Tamil Nadu claimed that “‘There are lots of private developers around
who want to buy land, but we are resisting...’”. However, some inhabitants have
apparently succumbed to pressure, since the headman reported that “‘A movie star has
bought land and built a big house just next to the village.’”; he also pointed out that
“‘Lots of fences are being erected as the land gets privatized’” (LankaNewspapers.com,
2009), creating a situation resembling that on the Andaman coast.
However, unlike in Thailand, the principal attempts at land grab have in Sri Lanka
and India been perpetrated by the governmental authorities.
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Strategic Land Grab
In both Sri Lanka and India, rehabilitation plans for the coastal areas affected by the
tsunami, have been drafted with a view to their future development for tourism, even
if their stated purpose was to restitute the life of the affected communities and
provide them safety from further tsunami disasters. The preference given to tourism
development, inherent in governmental reconstruction plans, had already in 2005
provoked a spokesman for the Movement for National Land and Agricultural
Reform in Sri Lanka to claim that “the tsunami ‘is a misfortune for the poor, but a
bonanza for the government, and the powerful’” (Ranawana, 2005).
A report published in 2009, 5 years after the tsunami disaster, concluded that:
The Indian and Sri Lankan governments used the mass displacement of coastal
people from their land by the tsunami as an opportunity to sell off prime
beaches for tourism. In many places, newly established ‘buffer zones’ prevented
residents from returning to rebuild homes and businesses – ostensibly to protect
them from another tsunami. Many communities have been re-housed in isolated
villages several kilometres inland. (LankaNewspapers.com, 2009)
In India the government has attempted since 1991 “to prevent new buildings, and
industrial or commercial development within 500 meters of the high tide line, while
permitting local community settlements to remain”. However, after the tsunami, “the
Tamil Nadu State Government sought to restrict community resettlement in this
zone, refusing to help families living up to 200 meters from the high tide line, unless
they agreed to give up their land and move to new settlement areas beyond the
buffer zone (Leonard, 2007, p. 59).
This meant in fact that numerous fishing villages, dependent on the sea for their
survival, would have to be relocated inland, away from their source of livelihood,
leaving the coastal strip open for future large-scale tourism development.
In Tamil Nadu, panchayat (community council) leaders at a meeting were “cautioned
against agreeing to the displacement of coastal communities. For the safety of the
fisher folk, a relocation of tsunami-affected people towards safer locations may be
acceptable... However, no further development (including tourism) should be
allowed within 500 metres from the high tide line (HTL)...”. The meeting “strongly
warned against the strategic eviction of fishing communities to make way for future
development of tourism” (OpenSpaceForum, 2006).
In fact, according to a survey in the buffer zone in Tamil Nadu, “90% of the almost
40,000 households...had no intention of giving up their land, houses, or places of
worship, and are rebuilding even without government assistance” (Leonard, 2007,
p. 59), thus obstructing the authorities’ relocation plans.
In Sri Lanka that “buffer zone” was set at “100 meters in the densely populated west
and south, and 200 meters in the badly-damaged east and north”; this regulation “pre-
vented 30% of the tsunami-affected population from returning to their land” (Leonard,
2007, p. 59).
Commenting on that regulation, a Sri Lankan opposition newspaper described the
government’s imposition of that buffer zone as a “blatant act of the tourism-industry
Tourism and Land Grab after the Indian Ocean Tsunami 233
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cartel [to] grab...priceless beach property” (Ranawana, 2005). The correspondent
claimed that the “post-tsunami reconstruction plan has a blueprint for the construction
of 15 tourist resorts”, and pointed out that “the politically well-connected high-end
tourism industry will have a free-run of the island’s famous beaches with no hindrance
from the pesky fisher-folk and other beach dwellers they have been trying to get rid of
for years” (Ranawana, 2005). However, “during the run-up to the elections in Novem-
ber 2005, the coastal regulations were relaxed” (Leonard, 2007, p. 61), apparently to
appease the local population.
The principal example of strategic land grab in Sri Lanka is the authorities’ plan for
Arugam Bay, a place with potential for tourism development, which, before the
tsunami, had offered only simple guesthouses to visiting surfers. A few months after
the tsunami, governmental planning agencies “unveiled an elaborate reconstruction
blueprint [for the Bay] that would transform the community into an upscale resort of
five-star hotels, rental cottages, restaurants, a marina, a seaplane pier, even a helipad.
To make way for the new development, hundreds of fishermen...would have to
leave beachfront land they have occupied for generations” (Lancaster, 2005).
According to the estimate by an NGO, “the plan would require the relocation of up to
5,000 people”. Officials justified the plan as “necessary to protect the environment, curb
unregulated and often illegal development and attract investment”. The tourist board
chairman contended that “no private property would be seized”, while officials,
rather ironically, reassured that “Holders of legitimate deeds in the buffer zone
would be able to keep their land, but in most cases would not be allowed to use it
for business and residence” (Lancaster, 2005).
However, “Following vehement opposition from local residents, the plans [for
Arugam Bay] were [eventually] shelved. However, since the end of the civil war in
May 2009 the development of tourism in Sri Lanka is being aggressively pursued
once more. Arugam Bay has been dubbed “the new Koh Samui” [a popular island vaca-
tioning destination in Thailand] by one real estate developer, while land is being sold
for up to US$ 35,000 for half an acre” (LankaNewspapers.com, 2009). The authorities
seem to be realizing their intentions, even though they shelved their ambitious plans.
Discussion
The 2004 tsunami opened the coasts of several South and Southeast Asian countries for
penetration by “disaster capitalism”. This involved numerous attempts by outside
forces to grab the land abandoned by their fleeing inhabitants. The rate of success of
such attempts differed, according to the extent to which land tenure patterns have
been regulated prior to the disaster, the identity of the perpetrators of the land grab
attempts, and the strength of local resistance.
I have distinguished between two varieties of land grab, predatory, initiated by
private entrepreneurs or companies, and strategic, initiated by governmental or local
authorities. The data at my disposal indicate that predatory land grab was relatively
more common in Thailand, where in some areas land tenure patterns were still
unsettled, when the tsunami struck. It was less common in India or Sri Lanka, where
tenure patterns have apparently been generally more settled, due to land-registration,
started already in colonial times. Attempts at strategic land grab, however, were
234 E. Cohen
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more comprehensive in India and Sri Lanka than in Thailand. Governmental plans in
those countries called for the relocation of the affected coastal populations, ostensibly
for its future safety, from broad swaths of coastal land, with the alleged ulterior inten-
tion to devote the released land for tourism and other economic projects.
Both varieties of land grab often provoked fierce resistance by the displaced local
population. In cases of predatory land grab, in which outsiders led claim, or purchased
under duress, individual plots of land, resistance was in many cases unsuccessful;
locals mostly stood to lose their land in legal proceedings. Local resistance to attempted
strategic land grab of huge swathes of land by the authorities was significantly more suc-
cessful. While the authorities sought to achieve their goals by administrative regulations,
political considerations, such as reluctance to deploy force against people clutching to
their land, or fear of loss of support by the disgruntled population, eventually induced
them to ameliorate the regulations or rescind them.
Conclusion
“Disaster capitalism” is a new form of exploitation by powerful forces of vulnerable
groups of the population, shattered by disaster. Members of these groups might have
survived the disaster physically unhurt, but the disaster had put their property and live-
lihood in jeopardy. Their voice is rarely heard in the preparation of rehabilitation and
reconstruction plans, and they may be exposed to predatory opportunists, who seek to
use the post-disaster confusion to grab their lands, or to conspiratorial planning by the
authorities to remove them from their land on false pretences. NGOs and other agencies
should pay attention to protect and assist these vulnerable groups, which, though not
physically harmed, might fall victims to “disaster capitalist” projects in the destabilized
aftermath of a major disaster. The countervailing role of such organizations is particu-
larly called for in cases of disaster on coastal areas, which may be coveted by many
interested parties, seeking to grab the land of the poor in order to create vacationing
resorts for wealthy tourists.
Notes on Contributors
Erik Cohen is the George S. Wise Professor of Sociology (emeritus) at the Hebrew University of
Jerusalem, where he taught between 1959 and 2000. He has conducted research in Israel, Peru, the
Pacific Islands and, since 1977, in Thailand. He is the author of more than one-hundred and eighty publi-
cations. His recent books include Contemporary Tourism: Diversity and Change (Elsevier, 2004), and
Explorations in Thai Tourism (Emerald, 2008). He is a founding member of the International Academy
for the Study of Tourism. Erik Cohen presently lives and does research in Bangkok.
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