Post- COVID land development agenda: Lessons from the past

Emeritus Professor Nimal Gunatilleke-May 21, 2020, 10:59 pm
University of Peradeniya


It is heartening to learn that the Government of Sri Lanka is already putting in place, development plans to accelerate the performance and productivity in major economic sectors both in the short- and medium term, during the post-COVID-19 era. Agriculture is in the vanguard of this development drive in order to be self-sufficient in a number of crops that can be grown in Sri Lanka. This initiative is expected to ensure local food security while at the same time, saving on valuable foreign exchange that would have spent on importing these food items as we had done in the recent past.

Sri Lanka has so far handled the health crisis arisen from the COVID-19 pandemic quite well in our own unique ways, receiving accolades from the WHO as well as several other developed countries and international agencies, alike. In the same breath, we now have the potential and an excellent opportunity to develop our agriculture in an ecologically and socio-economically sustainable way learning from our past rich agro-ecological heritage while meeting the challenges of the post-COVID era. In this context, meeting our obligations to the International environment-related Conventions, inter alia, on Biodiversity, Climate Change and Combatting Desertification towards a greener recovery through mainstreaming nature-based solutions, where feasible, is most appropriate.

Green Economy-the way forward

Employing green economic strategies itself, would be a value addition, when it comes to exploring innovative marketing strategies for emerging niche markets for our export crops like tea, fruits and vegetables and spices in a fiercely competitive global trade milieu. Consequently, any stimulus packages that will be rolled out by the Government should be tied up with green economic initiatives including the improvement of sustainable livelihoods of people and communities. At the same time, it should result in environmentally friendly outcomes complying with Sustainable Development Goals. Consequently, preparing ourselves for innovative green labelling of our export agriproducts is a prudent way of driving any agricultural pursuit in the post-COVID era.

Having witnessed pollution-free metropolis and waterways over the last two months of travel restrictions and lockdowns, world over, the environmentally- conscious global community yearning for a sustainable future would expect to have a greater appeal for eco-labelled products coming from producer countries like Sri Lanka with innovative eco-labelling strategies.

Greener recovery could be achieved by conserving biodiversity, protecting ecosystem services and reducing carbon footprint that underpin a country’s prosperity and resilience to shocks like pandemics or any unpredictable natural disasters like tsunamis, floods or droughts. In fact, many people in Sri Lanka, as elsewhere in the tropics, depend directly on healthy natural resources and functioning ecosystems which are their safety nets, providing food from their fields, fodder for their animals, wood and non-wood resources such as spices and medicinals from home gardens and fresh water from streams and groundwater resources.

Sri Lanka-a small-holder paradise

Sri Lanka is a paradise of small holders from ancient times. We have proven examples of agricultural development in the past along ecologically and socio-economically sustainable land use systems known as Ellangawas or the world-renown ‘tank-cascade systems’ made up of communities of small-holder units organized along a cascading stream network. These Sri Lankan traditional agrarian systems known as "ellanga gammana" or Cascaded Tank-Village system in the Dry Zone, represented by Palugaswewa cascade systems in Anuradhapura district was designated as a Globally Important Agricultural Heritage System (GIAHS) by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) in April 2018. One of the main objectives of recognizing these sites is to protect and promote valuable agricultural heritage, which helps to preserve biodiversity, traditional knowledge and landscapes consisting of diverse mosaics of climate-resilient ecosystems, instead of vast hectarages of mono-culture crops across a heterogeneous landscape. If these GIAHSs could be revived, their products would undoubtedly have a niche export market.

For centuries, traditional farmers in these areas have sculpted our gently rolling landscape in the dry zone to create agricultural systems of exceptional aesthetic beauty, preserving biodiversity and creating resilient ecosystems and a valuable cultural heritage. We are pleased to see that these, now derelict, agro-ecological heritage systems are being gradually resuscitated in the North-Central and North-Western provinces with both national and international support programs given to these small-holder farming communities.

It is hoped that revitalizing these globally recognized traditional agro-ecosystems of ellanga-gammana would not only ensure food security and resilience to unpredictable climatic vicissitudes but also act as an agro-tourist attraction. Such initiatives have already made their impression as ‘out of the box’ ellanga-based high-end tourist hotel projects in Sigiriya area, for example. It may even qualify for eco-labelling as sustainably produced ‘ellanga’ fruits, vegetables, health foods etc.

It may be for these justifiable reasons that the ‘National Biodiversity Strategic Action Plan 2016-2022’ has recommended that the traditional sustainable uses of biodiversity are to be promoted and main-streamed (Target 7 of NBSAP). Most of these traditional sustainable systems have been evolved over time as nature-based solutions and are recognized world-over as GIAHSs. Taking appropriate actions to mainstream them would be a step in the right direction in this post-COVID development era.

In a similar manner, a major share of our tea, rubber, coconut and spice cultivation (ranging from 60 -70 per cent) is in the hands of small-holders and their contribution to foreign exchange earnings to the country’s coffers from export products from their small-holder gardens is quite substantial. Once again, any additional stimulus packages offered towards post-COVID recovery initiatives that will necessarily be rolled out by the Government should go towards strengthening sustainable livelihoods of these small-holder communities. It will enable them to move from any unsustainable to sustainable cultivation practices to improve their efficiency and productivity while safeguarding the valuable ecosystem services like water and soil conservation, efficient nutrient cycling, contributing to climate regulation, minimizing soil erosion and landslides, etc.

The medium- and large- scale plantations of cash crops (say > 25 ha), particularly tea in the mountainous districts, also need to rethink of strategies to obtain their produce in an ecologically more sustainable manner giving due consideration to the environmental costs/benefits with special reference to ecological services. These monoculture plantations need to plan for major transformative changes moving away from "business-as-usual" mindset. In this context, it is relevant to quote a major UN biodiversity report which says ‘revamping global food production, retooling the financial sector, moving beyond GDP as a measure of progress and other "transformative changes" are needed to save Nature and ourselves as Our Solutions are in Nature’.

For this to be accomplished, innovative longer-term strategic planning is indeed, needed now than ever before. Eco-friendly preferences of global customer community are rapidly expanding in this era of rapid decline of the natural capital accompanied by changing climate. Global customers are increasingly favoring produce coming from sustainably managed enterprises where the welfare of producer community has been taken care of. Growing number of customer bases are prepared to pay a premium price for such products creating new niche markets for exporters, to take a cue from. We are glad that this is already happening in Sri Lanka involving communities of small holders and such enterprises need to be further expanded.

Learning from the past: Wet zone

There are a number of past examples of unsustainable forestry and agro-industrial drives during periods of aggressively promoted national development initiatives in the name of achieving self-sufficiency. One of the earliest examples of this, is the now infamous Sinharaja logging project of the 1960-70s. One of the main objectives of setting up of this mega-project was to be self-sufficient in the supply of plywood veneers for packaging tea for export markets. Thanks to relentless public protests which mercifully lead to the abandoning of this project prematurely. All the details on this are well-documented history now except for the fact that the loan taken by the then Government in 1972 to meet the cost of the Sinharaja project machinery and the consultants’ fees to the tune of Canadian $ 4.5 million, that has to be paid back in 40 years with a 10-year grace period, may still not be paid back fully. If this loan agreement had not been rescheduled at the time of abrupt ending, the final repayment of this loan to log Sinharaja forest will be made sometime in 2021!

The lessons learnt are that the Sinharaja forest, has taken a complete turnaround and while provisioning essential ecosystem services, it is drawing a steady increase in both local and foreign visitors today and thereby perhaps generate a greater income annually by conserving the forest rather than from logging it for plywood. On the other hand, tea industry which has increased its output several times since the 1970s, has found an eco-friendly packaging solution for their tea exports which are being widely used now.

Another example, once again from Sinharaja, is that during a similar export drive in the 1970s, about 2000 ha of prime lowland rain forests of SW Sinharaja was clear-felled for cultivation of passionfruit to meet a demand apparently from a Swiss company. This project also fell through midway but not before the forest was clear-felled and all the timber was removed leaving a pathetic-looking barren landscape. Now most of these lands have been distributed among local people who are cultivating tea. Martin Wijesinghe, the naturalist par excellence with superlative traditional wisdom, once very philosophically said that Sinharaja is gradually being surrounded literally and metaphorically by a ‘ring of fire’ referring to the systematic drying up of the landscape by expanding tea cultivation around the forest amidst Pinus plantations, grasslands and fernlands.

There are also lessons to be learnt from the raising a selection of exotic Pinus and Eucalyptus species as plantations in barren grasslands and fernlands. It was claimed to be a great success as reforestation species in the 1980s and the 90s, but considered as environmentally unsuitable species. Later on, with the due recognition given to biodiversity and ecosystem service values of the natural forests, these exotic monoculture plantations established in the watersheds of mountainous areas and in upper slopes of hill ranges elsewhere in the wet lowlands, became the bane of the environmentalists. Local villagers living around these plantations, apparently did not receive any tangible benefits from these plantations unlike the natural forest. They too, disliked these plantations and are resorting to setting fires to them, regularly. Perhaps, these exotics may be the right species with their economic values but happen to have been planted in the wrong place, environmentally!

We have been able to find a nature-based solution to systematically replace the Pine plantations in NW Sinharaja buffer zone and also in the Peradeniya University campus lands in Lower Hantana. We have been able to convert a sample of these pine plantations successfully in to native and naturalized mixed broadleaf species stands using ecological principles. Both these stands are now serving as demonstration sites for educational purposes.

Another example of giving priority to economic benefits disregarding the ensuing environmental disbenefits is the establishing of pineapple plantations in steep-sloped lands replacing existing rubber stands in Ruwanwella area in Sabaragamuwa Province. Income from rubber latex had been insufficient for economically maintaining these plantations over several years as there were importation of latex cheaply from other countries for local manufacturing of rubber-based products thus bringing down the local purchasing prices. ( Same story as in the case of the pepper markets.) In order to support the economy of theses loss-making rubber plantations, using perhaps, environmentally ‘perverse’ incentives, these steeply- sloped lands were converted to pineapple plantations in order to attract more foreign exchange by their export. However, the environmental cost of this conversion would be much greater to the downstream areas than having rubber plantations in them.

Even during the early years of replanting rubber, a legume cover crop needs to be established for soil improvement and arresting soil erosion for which a ‘subsidy’ payment is given to the cultivator. None of these practices were evident in the pineapple plantations. It is an excellent study site for a student in agricultural resource economics to examine the comparative cost/benefits inclusive of environmental costs of the two contrasting plantation types.

There are lessons to be learnt from these at the national level. If, even a higher subsidy is given as a payment for ecosystem services (PES) for rubber plantations in very steep slopes and ridgetops for conserving the ecosystem services, the net ecological and economic benefits would be substantial. In these large rubber plantations, if the current land use patterns could be re-examined and retain the rubber tree cover in the steepest and landslide-prone areas without replanting, for which a reasonable payment could be made via their respective subsidy/cess payment scheme, this would be yet another step in the right direction in conserving our critical watersheds. For a comparison, all Eucalypt plantations above 1500 m are not felled for timber and allowed to be restored to a natural forest by the Forest Department.

Learning from the past: Dry zone

Moving into the dry zone, although a very pragmatic Environmental Impact Assessment was prepared for the Mahaweli Development Program - the largest multi-functional irrigation scheme in recent history - the recommendations on the establishment and maintenance of elephant corridors demarcated by the EIA Consultants (TAMS) was not followed satisfactorily.

Consequently, half a century since the implementation of Accelerated Mahaweli Program (AMP) and other related programs elsewhere in the country, we are experiencing an ever-increasing human-elephant conflicts resulting in hundreds of deaths of both elephants and humans, annually (see the figure attached). The crop damage - both while growing in the field, as well as after harvesting while stored in their dwellings, is becoming an eternal problem of serious proportions to the hapless local villagers. No amount of thunder crackers or, for that matter, electric fencing either around the villages or along the perimeters of the forests, would be a lasting solution until the elephant migratory routes are respected and reopened. Similarly, open garbage dumping in the forest reserves also need to be completely banned.

Now that fifty years or more have passed since implementing the Accelerated Mahaweli Program, there are many lessons that we ought to learn to avoid such calamities being repeated. Yet, there had been many a large-scale agri-business/industrial projects cropping up regularly over the past decades. Most of them are focused on short-term economic benefits disregarding their socio-ecological implications resulting in unwarranted human-induced calamities.

Large-scale land allocation for monoculture banana and sugarcane cultivation, among many others, has worsened this problem to be a nightmare for the traditional small-holder communities engaged in more sustainable mixed-farming micro-enterprises while, at the same time, affecting their bio-physical environment. Only a realistic resource economic analysis could enlighten the policy makers, on the longer-term environmental cost vs. shorter-term socio-economic benefits.

Two other recent mega-projects that received much public criticism for possible aggravation of human -animal conflict in the Mahaweli Down-stream area are i) the Land Project of the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) – Sri Lanka Compact and ii) the Trincomalee-Colombo Economic Corridor project, both, for most part, planned to be implemented in the same areas along the A6 highway from Trincomalee to Dambulla and eventually to Colombo. These economic corridors, if implemented will be in a direct collision course with the ecological corridors that the Wildlife Department is striving to reopen. The concerned public is eagerly awaiting the response of the new Government for these or their revised and reincarnated versions in this post-COVID era.

Post-COVID land issues

There is every possibility that some, if not most, of the agricultural development programs in the post-COVID era would be requesting land from the Government for their proposed activities. Most of these requests will invariably be directed to the lands administered by the Forest Department. These would-be entrepreneurs often assume that it is a land bank to be given away for any development program, be it a crop cultivation project or even as a dumping ground of garbage purportedly to be recycled. A classic example of the latter is the Bomburu-ella forest reserve in Nuwara Eliya District-the highest watershed of Uma oya. A portion of this reserve has been used over a decade as a garbage dumping site for Nuwara Eliya municipality which at present is grossly under-performing its functions although it was started as a foreign funded project claimed to be environmentally sound. Equally infamous ‘Apple Farm’ which is taken over by the local vegetable cultivators and expanding up the Pidurutalagala mountains on its NE face is yet another similar environmental tragedy for us to learn lessons from.

With the increased realization of the ecosystem service values that the natural forests do offer, all forms of forests administered by the Forest Department play a vital role providing these ecosystem services such as water and soil conservation, climate, flood and disease regulation. These include not only the dense natural forest but also the restoring open and scrub forests commonly known as ‘landu kele’.

Having recognized the universal importance of conserving the existing forests and restoring the degrade forests, the United Nations has declared 2021 – 2030 as the ‘Decade of Restoration’. Sri Lanka has committed to restore around 180,000 of its degraded forests under Paris Agreement, Bonn Challenge and New York Declaration as its Intended Nationally Determined Contributions in increasing the national forest cover from 29% - 32%. Most of these forests labelled as ‘open and sparse’ have been set aside for Assisted Natural Regeneration (ANR) a method recommended by the Food and Agricultural Organization for restoring natural forests. Going a step further, the Forest Department is currently assisting forestation of underutilized private lands, marginal tea landsand urban and public spaces providing the much needed know how in planting and nursery establishment.

There are other categories of forested lands that have escaped the attention they deserve for their sustainable management that include lands administered by Land Reform Commission (which was highlighted at a meeting with HE the President recently, as we observed on media) and those which are independently managed as temple lands coming under Buddhist Temporalities Ordinance and some of them are in environmentally critical areas within the country. The National REDD+ Investment Framework and Action Plan had highlighted this issue under its Policies and Measures (PAM 11) in strengthening protection of other state forested lands. Most of these lands particularly those come under Buddhist Temporalities Ordinance could be considered for their conservation of biodiversity and ecosystem services under schemes such as Payment for Ecosystem Services (PES) so that while the custodians of these forests would receive a monitory benefit for conserving them, the region of the country at large benefit from the valuable ecosystem services, including cultural, aesthetic and spiritual services they render.

Our remaining natural forest capital, be it the dense or sparse/open forest, it is far too, precious to be sacrificed for large-scale mono-culture crop cultivation projects intended for short-term benefits in the future. Sri Lanka has a proven historical record of natural or near-natural solutions evolved over centuries for sustaining a small-holder led socio-economic revival, resilient to future cataclysmic events. They may be ‘ellanga gammanas’, Kandyan Spice Gardens or multi-species and multi-functional home gardens elsewhere in the country, their unique value in sustainability is ever-increasing in this post-COVID era. As such, these nature-based heritage solutions, that Sri Lanka- the small-holder paradise island, has so proudly inherited, need to be main-streamed when moving in to the post-COVID era of land development.

I welcome comments and criticisms (nimsavg@gmail.com)