Responses and resilience of fisherfolks on the tsunami event in southern thailand

In this era of environmental insecurity, with increasing natural disasters-possibly caused by global warming-we have been made to realize that we are no longer "in the times of procrastination, of half measures, of soothings and bafflings, expedients of delays" (Sir Winston Churchill, 1936). In fact, we are entering a period of consequences.1 The inconvenient truth of increasing environmental insecurity has shifted the discourses of sustainable development. In the Indian Ocean, the December 26, 2004, Boxing Day Tsunami questioned the readiness of communities to cope with such disasters, their abilities to recover, and their resilience in an event of massive destruction. In this chapter, we examine the eastern rim of the ocean, in particular the communities in Phangnga and Krabi provinces, southern Thailand, and investigate factors attributed to the ability to recover and rehabilitate in such changing conditions.