Beyond Haiyan: Time to make a stand
Be it a tsunami in Aceh, floods in Pakistan or a Philippines typhoon, Asian disaster coverage for the West is often a window into a little- known region
Historians may look back at Typhoon Haiyan as a turning point in disaster journalism and the politics of climate change. For the first time, an extreme weather catastrophe in the tropics has shrugged off its “made in Asia” label and gone global. Coverage of storms, floods and droughts usually begins and ends with warzone style reporting about dire conditions on the ground. The raw numbers of the dead are interwoven with tragic personal histories of survivors who have lost homes and loved ones. The truism that a picture speaks a thousand words is most true of disaster journalism. With so many shocking scenes of destroyed homes, floating corpses and crying children, the ratio of images to words — already high in everyday reporting — skyrockets.
Collectively, these pictures insist on the specific locality of the disaster. Be it a tsunami in Aceh, Indonesia, floods in Pakistan or a Philippines typhoon, Asian disaster coverage is often, for those in the metropolitan media centres of the West, a window into a littleknown region of the world. Thrill- seeking storm chasers checked into hotels in Tacloban, in the Philippines province of Leyte, in advance of the superstorm. We ordinary consumers of news, meanwhile, trek vicariously through the ruins of its aftermath as disaster tourists, with star reporters as guides.
But just as the global climate system cares nothing for our nation- state borders, let alone the 24- hour news cycle, Haiyan is no longer a story exclusively about suffering Filipinos today. Naderev Sano, a Filipino delegate to the annual United Nations climate convention in Warsaw, managed to penetrate the localised coverage after the typhoon last week with an emotional appeal for global action on climate change. His tearful speech, culminating in a resolution to go on hunger strike, was first captured not by the mainstream news media — its eye trained on Tacloban — but by amateur video uploaded on YouTube.
Sano made his point with the clear eyes of grief: He mourns the victims of Haiyan, while refusing food to protest the death sentence hanging over the victims of future Haiyans, an exponentially increasing death toll if global carbon emissions continue to rise unchecked. Converging with coverage of Sano has been an above- average number of climatology experts claiming airtime on cable news. Their message: Sano is right. The ocean waters off the Philippines are the warmest at depth in the world and getting warmer at an unprecedented rate. Southeast Asia, by its physical geography, is prone to typhoons and its peoples have long adapted to them. But these warmer waters — part of a global, coupled atmospheric- ocean system under increasing stress — are generating new superstorms that will erode human resilience.
Haiyan is just the beginning of the new extreme weather regime our planet is entering, where storm surges routinely cut a swath through coastal populations and regional economies get hammered. Disaster journalism will not stay local. As extreme weather disasters multiply in the tropics and beyond, at what point will international humanitarian institutions be overwhelmed, and victims by the millions left to fend for themselves, as in the global climate crisis of 1815- 18?
Closer to US, how soon will people no longer be mere spectators of disaster news, but feel the creeping chill of their own vulnerability to an imminent Super Sandy or Super Katrina? As a global story, the Haiyan challenge is far greater: To make a stand for humanity’s future on a livable planet. The alternative — a world of hundred- fold Haiyans and exhausted human beings — is too gruesome to contemplate.
gulfnews. com