Post-catastrophic actions – an introduction to remediation

During recent years we have seen harmful environmental effects caused by catastrophic weather events such as heavy rain leading to flush flooding as well as landslides. Low rain fall causing drought and huge forest fires causes great harm and destruction of land which leads to large ecological damage which might take decades to repair. Strong winds cause tornadoes that have devastating effects. Deforestation and huge erosion as well landslides may kill thousands of people. In the Linnaeus Ecotech 24 conference, we highlight; war, flooding, fires, landslide, earthquake, oil, mining and industrial pollution, leachate, and air pollution and include phytoremediation in the action plan to reduce the effect of the catastrophe and recover/remediate air, water and land. The first own contact with local catastrophe was a large forest fire when I was a kid, and I was helping the fire men and the fire brigade to extinguish the fire and spend numerous hours in the smoke from the fire and my health was temporally affected and I had to stayed in bed some hours at home to recover. Furthermore, as teenager I experience a highly intensive convective rainfall. During a night, the village got 160 mm rain and fathers’ commercial garden was totally flooded and I could padel canoe over the land and lots of soil masses were transported into the river, so much as a three-story building was in the risk to fall into the river. I got the first opportunity to appear in the TV news reporting about the disaster. I have also experienced several catastrophes in Brazil related to heavy rainfalls, landslides and collapses of mining sludge and storage dams. On the 12th January 2011in Serra do Mar, nearby the cities of Teresopolis and Nova Friburgo, the rain generated flash floods and sent huge masses of mud down the steep hillsides and 860 persons were killed and about 8 700 became homeless. I was sitting just some 10 km from the site, and I registered a rain intensity of about 2.2 mm/minute and the highest intensity I have registered in Sweden is 1.8 mm/minute. The difference was that the area in Brazil had 10–20 mm/day every day during the week before and the ground was saturated. The disaster at the Mariana Mine in Brazil, caused the death of 170 people in a landslide. A large area collapsed and with large amounts of mining sludge, an entire valley was flooded into the sea with major consequences for the inhabitants. The authorities showed no responsibility since the affected persons could not wait for the relevant countermeasures, as the mining company provides their livelihood. Later, the Brazilian government took some minor measures, including some compensation for the families affected by the accident. I was also on site in the Mariana dam disaster, 5 November 2015, some weeks after the incident (the Bento Rodrigues or Samarco dam catastrophe, the Fundao tailing dam at the Germano iron ore mine in Samarco Mariana). I tried to raise money to help with the clean-up and involve Swedish experts. 19 people were killed, and the pollutants spread along 668 km in the river. The terrible thing is that another dam collapsed 25 January 2019, at Brumadinho in the state of Minas Gerais with the same mining company involved (owner mining company Vale). This time the location, and the number of casualties was around 300. There are many examples of weather-related natural disasters reported in media. The ecological damage caused by oil, mining, industrial pollution, leachate, and air pollution in the aftermath of natural disasters require an action plan to recover and remediate air, water and land. The intension will be to develop efficient bio-remedial technologies for sustainable recovery and protection of air, water and land in the Baltic Sea. Assessment of number and areas of contaminated sites in the Baltic Sea Region, type of contaminants involved, identification of stakeholders and in long term calculate a cost benefit analysis of phytoremediation projects is the main objective of the project ROOTS (Roots for Remediation: Collaborative Phytoremediation in Post-Catastrophe Environments).