To what extent has the devastating South-Asian earthquake threatened the survival of the planet, asks Mohamed Sid-Ahmed The year 2005 began with a calamity, resulting not from conflicts between people but from an unprecedented natural disaster that has so far claimed over 155,000 lives, a figure that is expected to rise still more over the coming period. Is this Nature's reaction to the abuse it is suffering at the hands of the human race, its revenge on us for challenging its laws beyond acceptable limits? The earthquake that struck deep under the Indian Ocean was the strongest in over a century. What is still more critical is that what we have witnessed so far is only the beginning of the catastrophe. According to a spokesman from the World Health organisation, "there is certainly a chance that we could have as many dying from communicable diseases as from the tsunamis". The logistics of providing the survivors with clean water, vaccines and medicines are formidable, and, with many thousands of bodies lying unburied, epidemics spread by waterborne diseases are expected to claim many thousands of victims. There is also the possibility of seismic activity elsewhere in the world because disturbances in the inner structure of the earth's crust have occurred and there are no means to foresee how they will unfold. Will they build up into still broader disarray and eventually move our planet out of its orbit around the sun? Moreover, even if we can avoid the worse possible scenario, how can we contain the earthquake's effects ecologically, meteorologically, economically and socially? The contradiction between Man and Nature has reached unprecedented heights, forcing us to re-examine our understanding of the existing world system. US President George W Bush has announced the creation of an international alliance between the US, Japan, India, Australia and any other nation wishing to join that will work to help the stricken region overcome the huge problems it is facing in the wake of the tsunamis. Actually, the implications of the disaster are not only regional but global, not to say cosmic. Is it possible to mobilise all the inhabitants of our planet to the extent and at the speed necessary to avert similar disasters in future? How to engender the required state of emergency, that is, a different type of inter-human relations which rise to the level of the challenge before contradictions between the various sections of the world community make that collective effort unrealisable? The human species has never been exposed to a natural upheaval of this magnitude within living memory. What happened in South Asia is the ecological equivalent of 9/11. Ecological problems like global warming and climatic disturbances in general threaten to make our natural habitat unfit for human life. The extinction of the species has become a very real possibility, whether by our own hand or as a result of natural disasters of a much greater magnitude than the Indian Ocean earthquake and the killer waves it spawned. Human civilisation has developed in the hope that Man will be able to reach welfare and prosperity on earth for everybody. But now things seem to be moving in the opposite direction, exposing planet Earth to the end of its role as a nurturing place for human life. Today, human conflicts have become less of a threat than the confrontation between Man and Nature. At least they are less likely to bring about the end of the human species. The reactions of Nature as a result of its exposure to the onslaughts of human societies have become more important in determining the fate of the human species than any harm it can inflict on itself. Until recently, the threat Nature represented was perceived as likely to arise only in the long run, related for instance to how global warming would affect life on our planet. Such a threat could take decades, even centuries, to reach a critical level. This perception has changed following the devastating earthquake and tsunamis that hit the coastal regions of South Asia and, less violently, of East Africa, on 26 December. This cataclysmic event has underscored the vulnerability of our world before the wrath of Nature and shaken the sanguine belief that the end of the world is a long way away. Gone are the days when we could comfort ourselves with the notion that the extinction of the human race will not occur before a long-term future that will only materialise after millions of years and not affect us directly in any way. We are now forced to live with the possibility of an imminent demise of humankind. Scientific and technological progress has helped us increase our knowledge of and domination over our environment. But the downside is that it has increased the chances of things getting out of hand, as new factors not foreseen in advance are added to the equation. For example, nobody could have predicted the damage we have managed to cause to the protective ozone layer and the dramatic climatic changes this has brought about. Global warming threatens to melt the polar ice caps, raising ocean levels and threatening to submerge coastal regions under the rising water. Thus, as our knowledge of the environment increased so too did our vulnerability to new factors over which we had no control. The progress that contributed to increasing our mastery of the world also contributed to exposing us to new and sometimes insurmountable dangers. Many will see the Asian disaster as portending the advent of doomsday. Can this affect the conduct of humankind and make people introduce an element of ethics and/ or rationality in their behaviour? Is it possible to create conditions where the confrontation between Man and Nature will be given priority over the conflict situations that regularly arise between Man and Man? In other words, can inter-human conflicts be resolved in a manner beneficial to all, in a win-win situation instead of a lose-lose situation detrimental to all the protagonists? But for human conflicts to become less acute and, ultimately, not expose the human species to mutual extermination, democracy is unavoidable. By democracy here is meant a mechanism which guarantees that the political process serves all parties, not just a few at the expense of many. Many regimes in today's world pay lip service to democracy while in reality adopting political processes that violate the principles of democracy, whether procedurally or substantively. Genuine democracy cannot go hand in hand with electoral rigging. Such perversions defeat the purpose of democracy and are counter- productive, increasing social tensions instead of decreasing them. This is an inescapable law. Democracy is either genuine or does not arise in the first place.
