CIA The World Factbook

YI: Talking about the environment in Sri Lanka, what is the most threatening environmental problem in the country?

Suranjan Kudithuwakku: Basically, what I see is that the environmental problem, I always link - the Green Movement always links -- with the life of the people, or every being on earth. The most threatening issue at the moment is the water and the air pollution. And if you look at the water and soil polluted, the people have a lot of problems in terms of drinking water, and in terms of food. And there are a lot of problems with health because of the air pollution. So those are the three main concerns. We are not categorizing the deforestation, mining, and the like. We say, air, water and soil pollution are the biggest environmental problems and it is a kind of a threat to the human kind or human civilization in Sri Lanka at the moment.

YI: But that seems to be a problem brought about by more population, an increase in population. So, it's really a social, a population problem, isn't it?

Suranjan Kudithuwakku: It should also be coupled with some kind of economic paradigm the government used to adhere for the last 20 years. Basically, they got a lot of bad industries into the country because of the free trade policy. And there were a lot of the industries brought in the name of free trade zone. So it became a very bad problem and also those industrial areas became highly populated, bringing a lot of problems into the country.

YI: Industrial pollution?

Suranjan Kudithuwakku: Yes, industrial pollution.

YI: Yet, some people say that actually, the rate of deforestation in Sri Lanka is about the worst in the world, that in the past 10 years or so, the rate of degradation has been more than 35 percent a year. What do you think about that?

Suranjan Kudithuwakku: At about 1990, at the beginning of the 20th century, 70 percent of the planet was covered by forests. At the beginning of the 21st century, there was 22 percent in the country. So the biggest decolonization program started in 1940s, when Sri Lanka gained independence, there were a lot of leaders who thought they should go for mega irrigation projects and resettle people everywhere, coupled with lots of social-environmental techniques and also one of the reasons for the war. And those programs were in 1980, then in 1977 the new government came in and they were looking for a policy and they thought that there would be a lot infrastructure, and they built big dams, destroying the upper stream of the watersheds and then they destroyed the top down forest areas in the intermediate and dry zone areas, and that brought something like 22-23 percent of forests being cut within those 10 years. That was the biggest problem that happened if you think about the megawatt Mahaveli development project where they built five dams, and where they wanted to resettle 300,000 people. So it used lots of land, lots of forest land, in the upstream watershed areas. Even today, the expanding of those activities and infrastructure building clear a lot of forest areas. That is a big issue. That is part of the government and decision-making process and expanding the villages and the population in rural areas, and they also did 50-50 destruction.

YI: So, going back now to your statement of industrial pollution and how commercial interests prevailed over environmental interests, how can you maintain a balance between people's livelihood and the ecology?

Suranjan Kudithuwakku: That is the kind of highly complex question. When the government says development, they say that we address the unemployment problem. But at the same time, when they do that, there are a lot of people losing their livelihoods, in terms of fishery, small-scale agriculture, home garden or people living off the forest resources. It's a big problem at the moment, so that is what it is if you think about the sustainable development and the community development and how to keep these small-scale programs. That is a big challenge at the moment. We have to address the problem in Sri Lanka, how we can implement sustainable development. So, there are many definitions for such a sustainable development. The person in the USA understands sustainable development very differently from Sri Lanka. So, what we always tell the government, don't look at the Singapore model, don't look at the model of the Malaysians, look at models that will be suitable for the people of Sri Lanka, while thinking about the global environmental crisis. So, when you make infrastructure, make one that is needed for Sri Lankan development. That is what we always tell the government and the decision makers at the internal financial institutions. It is very hard to keep a balance between the neo-liberal economic policies and the dependent economic livelihood in the country. It has always been a challenge and it has always been a kind of a big argument and a big debate in the society at the moment.