Sri Lanka scientist changes national policy to protect environment and reduce tsunami impact

Here is a story showing how the initiative of one person can result in life-saving policy changes. Dr. Harindra Joseph S. Fernando is the director of the Environmental Fluid Dynamics Program at Arizona State University and a U.S. citizen born in Sri Lanka. He and his team followed up on information gathered on a family holiday about the destruction of coral reefs off that nation's coast.

By demonstrating that human activity greatly increased the devastation of the 2004 tsunami, they sparked enforcement of laws against coral mining and other environmentally unsafe practices.

Their report was published in the 16 August 2005 issue of Eos, the newspaper of the
American Geophysical Union.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/25/science/25conv.html?ref=science
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2005/2005EO330002.shtml