Nature 11

We don‘t want tourist hotels! Whites, get out!

Naomi Klein (2007: 389)

Chanting at a demonstration in Sri Lanka, which was devastated by the 2004 tsunami that destroyed many fishermen's huts which were never rebuilt because hotels were constructed in their place.

The 2004 tsunami took the lives of around 35,000 people in Sri Lanka, with the majority of victims being small-scale fishermen. The government subsequently banned construction near the coast. However, it exempted the tourism industry from this requirement, and encouraged hoteliers to build where the fishermen had previously lived. Tourism was to be financed with money that came from the relief fund for tsunami victims (see Klein 2007: 385ff.). In general, one can say that those presumably responsible for the spread of so-called natural disasters (e.g. through lifestyle, work in the industrial sector, etc.) are often not affected by their consequences (e.g. the tsunami), and sometimes even benefit from them.

*Naomi Klein (2007): The Shock Doctrine. The Rise of Disaster Capitalism. Toronto: Knopf Canada.

2005