The December 2004 earthquake and tsunami had unprecedented consequences for human populations and natural systems in coasts and islands across the Indian Ocean. The coastline of India was seriously impacted by this event. Although the brunt of the damage was experienced in Tamil Nadu, where the most number of lives and livelihoods were lost, the impacts of the tsunami were felt from Andhra Pradesh to Kerala.

While state governments, working closely with NGOs and international agencies like the UNDP, have been working to restore the livelihoods of communities living along the coast, there have been, thus far, few attempts to comprehensively understand the impacts of this event on marine and nearshore ecosystems, their present status, and the status of human communities dependent on these natural areas for their livelihoods. Additionally, there is need to focus more closely on the mid to long-term consequences of rehabilitation efforts on the natural resilience of social and ecological systems along the coast.

While much of the rehabilitation in the wake of these disasters necessarily has to focus on purely human needs, the interactions between humans and the ecosystems they utilise cannot be ignored. Management often relies on the ability to predict a stress or threat, and they often fail in the face of environmental and social uncertainties. Human and ecological systems are impacted by a range of external factors that can seriously alter their normal functioning. These factors range from direct ones such as a tsunami to indirect factors such as policy and legal changes. Ensuring that both human and ecological systems function to pre-disaster levels is only a limited view of the recovery process. Social and ecological rehabilitation should be geared at bolstering the innate ‘adaptive’ capacity of ecosystems and human communities inherent in these systems. From an ecological perspective this would require an assessment of functional parameters of the ecosystem, while from a social perspective it would require an understanding of social networks, socio-economic institutions of control, and parameters of community and individual identity that help bolster resilience in times of crisis. The analysis of policies governing these socio-ecological systems and facilitating necessary policy changes will expedite the recovery process.

The present situation offers an opportunity to assess and monitor the response of natural and modified ecosystems in the face of an extreme event, which in turn will help determine factors that contribute to resilience within these systems. Understanding these factors may assist in pre-empting and perhaps mitigating impacts from future natural disasters and hazards. In the short-term, such monitoring is key to understanding environmental damage and prioritising environmental restoration.