To Protect the People First Protect the Environment

Photo courtesy of Al Jazeera

Decades of devaluing the importance of the environment, bad planning and politically expedient development resulted in the widespread devastation caused by Cyclone Ditwah. Hundreds need not have died and billions of rupees would not have had to be spent to rebuild only if policymakers over the decades were intelligent enough and brave enough to understand that the environment is the ultimate safety barrier against natural disasters and climate change. It has yet to be seen if the present regime has that perception, although the initial indications are not good. Environmental change is coming and Sri Lanka has just had a taste of it.

There is a new world climate order. Sri Lanka can no longer rely on what was once predictable weather patterns. For some years now, the monsoons have not come on time and when they have, they have frequently brought a deluge that floods fields and homes and destabilizes soils – the cause of landslides. Then in between there have been long spells of intense drought that dry out water sources and desiccate the land. The once enjoyed times of equilibrium are vanishing fast. This is being brought about by climate change and resulting global warming. Scientists have been warning the world about this for decades but the world is ruled by policymakers who think only of today, not the future. Yet it is not too late. This balance can be restored in a couple more decades if we act now to slow the warming and plan not only to mitigate for the present crises but to also adapt to prevent them from having such devastating consequences when they happen in the future.

An unusual cyclone

Dr. Pathmakumara Jayasingha, a senior lecturer of the Department of Geography at Colombo University has described Ditwah as an unusual cyclone. This is the first time in history that a cyclone of this severity has hit this country. Sri Lanka was not in a cyclone belt and none had the experience to deal with its ferocity. He also states that, “…it is impossible to predict the development of hurricanes, months in advance, so there may be very little time to prepare once it is known.” According to the calculations of Prof. Lakshman Galagedara of the Engineering Faculty of the University of Peradeniya, “…150,000 cubic metres per sec of water was blasting through a country that’s only 0.93% the size of Amazon basin, yet producing 70% of the Amazon River’s peak discharge! What this really means is that Sri Lanka’s infrastructure was never designed for what’s coming”.

The country must be ready for the next time. Despite the cries of some who wish to make this a political issue, no government has ever been ready. This is why the necessary measures and infrastructure to deal with it has never been in place and the unplanned development that has led to the severity of this disaster was permitted.

The Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) is a system of currents that brings warm water to the higher altitudes where it cools, sinks and then returns to the equatorial regions at depth. This is a slow process but there is evidence to show that it is slowing still further. When this distribution of heat is interrupted, it will result in cooler northern latitudes and a buildup of heat near the equator as is seen even now. Overall, the temperature of the earth is rising. This heat results in increased evaporation of ocean waters, a corresponding rise in humidity and increased rainfall and winds – cyclones and hurricanes. Whereas Sri Lanka, Indonesia, Thailand and India have been hit by two powerful cyclones just this week, a few months ago the Caribbean too was struck with a fierce hurricane that devastated the islands.

According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Global Warming (IPCC), “Human activities, principally through emissions of greenhouse gases, have unequivocally caused global warming, with global surface temperature reaching 1.1°C above 1850-1900 in 2011-2020. Global greenhouse gas emissions have continued to increase, with unequal historical and ongoing contributions arising from unsustainable energy use, land use and land-use change, lifestyles and patterns of consumption and production across regions, between and within countries, and among individuals”. This is probably going to increase because although promises have been made and targets set, the main contributors to greenhouse gases have no real intention of implementing any of these in the short term. In the meantime, countries most vulnerable to climate change, especially island nations, bear the brunt of it. Again, according to the IPCC (2023), “Widespread and rapid changes in the atmosphere, ocean, cryosphere and biosphere have occurred. Human-caused climate change is already affecting many weather and climate extremes in every region across the globe. This has led to widespread adverse impacts and related losses and damages to nature and people…Vulnerable communities who have historically contributed the least to current climate change are disproportionately affected.”

There must be a change in policy

Investigation of the areas worst affected show that the majority of the landslides and the most devastating of the floods happened in areas where there was illegal or ill-advised development. Every flood, every landslide has one of these as the root cause of the disaster. It is good to remember that despite their vast clearance of the hill country for the growing of tea and coffee, the British made a law that no development was permitted above 5,000 feet. They recognized the importance of these areas to the stability of the mountain slopes, their value as the sources of much of the rivers and tributaries that sustain all life on this island and irrigate our fields and for the important biodiversity they harbor. That policy has long since been abandoned and the bitter harvest is being reaped today.

There have to be changes in policy, planning and laws to plan better for the future rebuilding and protection of this country. As the IPC also state, “Effective climate action is enabled by political commitment, well-aligned multilevel governance, institutional frameworks, laws, policies and strategies and enhanced access to finance and technology. Clear goals, coordination across multiple policy domains, and inclusive governance processes facilitate effective climate action. Regulatory and economic instruments can support deep emissions reductions and climate resilience if scaled up and applied widely. Climate resilient development benefits from drawing on diverse knowledge.” Fundamental to this is the imposition of harsh penalties on those who indulge in illegal development and Environmental Impact Assessments (EIAs) on legal developments to be more stringent not only in consideration of the present environment and biodiversity but also on the consequences in the event of cyclones and other such natural events. In most instances of illegal or ill-advised development, laws as regulations exist but have not been enforced and when EIAs are done, the authorities have done little or no enforcement of EIA approval conditions.

Effects of the cyclone on wildlife and the wilderness

Although there is little information available at the moment on precisely how the cyclone has affected wildlife, it is reported that many animals drowned and others displaced, resulting in increased human-wildlife conflict. It is apparent, however, that it has damaged habitat and the environment. Landslides, flooding and high winds have radically changed some areas and much effort will have to be made to restore them to not just the condition they were before but to that state that they should be in. 

Once again, as in the past, when faced with disaster the ordinary people of this country, those both in the disaster zones and those not affected by it, have come together to help those less fortunate in a way that is to be applauded. It is time to rebuild better to protect all the people of this country. Investigations must take place to find out what was deficient and why it was so and what needs to be done to ensure that everything is always ready for the next one, and it will happen. In the words of Dr. Jayasingha, “…it is evident that Sri Lanka is no longer safe from cyclones. Therefore, it must be said that the need for conducting timely research with constant attention is strongly felt.”

Some proposals for the prevention of landslides and flooding

The Wildlife and Nature Protections Society (WNPS) published some well researched, well thought out and achievable proposals to help prevent future human deaths and environmental and infrastructural devastation. A selected summary of these are given below:

• All illegal structures and construction on protected areas and buffer zones at an elevation above 5,000 feet should be removed and the people moved out.
• All illegal construction and shops, hotels, homes and establishments built on water reservation areas, buffer zones, protected areas and roadsides should be issued vacation notices.
• All the areas where landslides took place should immediately be demarcated by the National Building Research Organization (NBRO) as high risk landslide prone areas. Reconstruction and future construction should not be permitted on those areas.
• The Central Environmental Authority (CEA) or other relevant authority should add a further 30-50 meters on either side of the earth slip boundaries and declare them Conservation Areas including the earth slip footprint. This should be followed by amajor tree planting campaign to bring back native trees onto those locations.
• Declare the widened borders of rivers and waterway which carried the flood water through as the new river boundaries. Create mandatory buffer zones beyond these new boundaries as reservations rather than just fill up the areas that got washed away.
• Declare a 20 year restoration plan that removes all the pine and cyprusspecies which plague the higher altitudes of our mountains. Gradually convert these zones back to natural forest.
• Reinforce the notion of forest corridors along the banks of all waterways along the entire river continuum both in the hills and in the lowland urban areas. All waterway banks should be devoid of human structures within the existing mandatory natural boundaries, as per the relevant Acts.
• The central focus must be to transition from traditional economic zoning to biodiversity inclusive spatial planning.
• The forecast unpredictability of weather patterns requires all planning and development to cater to these changes. Climate change adaptation should be an integral part of developing any strategy and the country must invest in the activeimplementation of currently developed Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) in all sectors.
• Move away from large scale monocultures that are easily wiped out by wind and floods to diversified agroforestry, building market chains for crops that can withstand disasters.
• The planning must designate critical wetland catchments as identified in the National Environmental Action Plan as essential flood retention basins, thereby enforcing their protection as no-build zones.
• The above includes strict Environmental Impact Assessments and conserving of the last remaining coastal defenses that include mangroves, salt marshes, sand dunes, coastal shrub-lands and sandy beaches as well as seagrass and coral reefs while also restoring those already degraded as the first line of defense for coastal cities.
• Urban water exit points have choked the entire country and the backed up water spills over into other areas upstream and onto paddy fields. An initiative to take down all illegal city structures bordering urban waterways within five kilometers of the coastal line should be undertaken immediately.
• Illegal coastal structures have also contributed to the narrowing of river mouths. The potential to explore a few new exit routes, bring back and declare more marshlands as conservation areas and aggressively put a stop to illegal filling and building on marshland will help ease future problems.
• Restore sponge landscapes. Abandon the colonial drain water fast mentality which worsens downstream flooding and adopt a sponge city/landscape approach. This requires reconnecting rivers to their floodplains and restoring the ancient tank cascade systems in the dry zone to absorb excess cyclone rainfall and prevent flash floods.
• Connect resilience corridors. Shift from isolated forest patches to Other Effective Area-based Conservation Measures (OECMs) that connect ecosystems physically by both State and the private sector.
• A data driven nation. We still have no centralized data collection mechanism and as such we are crippled by our inability to forecast, predict or take data driven decisions. Data and access to data and access to environmental data to all is essential.
• Eco-health surveillance. We need to realign health monitoring to include ecosystem indicators. Monitor water quality in wetlands and lagoons real time to predict post-disaster disease outbreaks like Leptospirosis or dengue, recognizing that degraded ecosystems breed disease hence require restoration.
• All illegally constructed structures should not be restored by state funded mechanismsnor permitted to be rebuilt even through private funding.
• The Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) process must be strengthened. The Central Environmental Authority (CEA) and the other project approving agencies for all EPL, IEE and EIAs have the technical skills to carry them out too. However, it must be ensured that the CEA and other project approving agencies remain independent in this process without any political pressure placed on them, especially in relation to state funded projects. Enforcement of EIA approval conditions should be a priority for the CEA and other project approval agencies.

A problem through the decades

Already some politicians have stated that some of these proposals may not be feasible, especially moving thriving businesses from areas where they should never have been. Have they balanced the economic feasibility of closing these ventures against the cost of human life? How many more must die?

Here lies the true problem with the policymakers, now and before, in that they have largely ignored the counsel of dedicated scientists and researchers preferring to go by more politically expedient, anecdotal advice. This applies not only to environment and conservation but in most planning initiatives. As the people have risen to work together for their fellow citizens and the country, so must our policymakers and for this important reason – tomorrow, the day after, next year or in ten, another cyclone is going to happen and we must be prepared.