Tourism and land grab in the aftermath of the Indian Ocean Tsunami

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.