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YI: But people are aware that there should be a balance between the commercialization of resources like water, even for people's use, a balance between that and conservation. Are people aware of that?

Suranjan Kudithuwakku: Yes, but the problem is that if we think about the water issue, the way the government wants to make a water policy, and it always comes up with making a commodity of water, so people get very negative ideas about having to pay a lot for the water in the beginning. So, there is always a conservation method that came with commercialization, as if it was commercial goods. But the government now is slowly understanding that there should be a balance, that water is a kind of a cultural good in one way, and also that is a basic human need. Conservation of water is one thing, but commercialization is something else. There still seems to be a conflict between the government policy makers and the farmers, fishermen, and the shanties and the people who want the water for free. But we also see that there is a lot of wastage happening because of the no policy situation. So, we are now lobbying with the government something that we have been fighting for five years, a framework to get the inclusion to the distribution of water, and a good balance of industrialization and also small-scale farmers, and the domestic leaders in the country. That is a big challenge but people have understood that we need a water policy but it should be a kind of people-centric water policy.

YI: It's a classic development dilemma.

Suranjan Kudithuwakku: Yes, people think that water will be a kind of commercial good in the future, like wine. We are a kind of a water-borne country because we have lots of water here. The people don't see it as a scarce resource. That is the debate here. Yet there are still a lot of people living without water, but it is not a problem of availability of water. It is a problem of distribution and management.

YI: NGOs like yours must work in a very tight-security situation with the conflict going on. How difficult is it to work in such a situation? What do you do?

Suranjan Kudithuwakku: We in the Green Movement, we must select areas where we can go and work. But the Green Movement sees that we have to work towards social justice. That is our main task, so then we make our three-piece concept, and that is always to make compromise, commitment and consensus. So when we started to work in conflict areas we made a lot of compromises with the rebel group, lots of compromises with the army and other security groups and we still do a lot of commitment. When the terrorists say, you should not go at night, we should stay here. And if the Sri Lanka government tells us to do something, we do it. We always say it is our commitment towards the community who has suffered from this really, really bad, ongoing conflict situation.

YI: What about consensus?

Suranjan Kudithuwakku: I can explain that with a kind of a short story. Like during our tsunami relief work, in the beginning when we... we always thought we should go to the north and east. So we went to the east, and we were stopped by one of the rebel groups who stopped us and told us we couldn't go beyond that point, that we should give them the relief items to them. We told them no, that we came to stay. We want to see the people, we want to work with them and see what kind of difficulties they were facing. Then we went to the government agent and we took him and we took the leader of the rebel group, who was a woman, and we asked the security forces, the commanding officer to come this particular place and we bring these three groups to reach a small consensus to work within a three-month paradigm to work with the people afflicted by the tsunami and natural disasters. And it worked for six months, we built a small fishing village without bribing anyone. So, we reached a kind of a consensus. Whenever we are around they don't exploit the Green Movement's resources. The government approves, no one questioned our work. If there were questions, we immediately summoned the three groups and settled it within two to three hours, because we know that if we delayed it, someone could get killed. So that is how we are carry out compromise, commitment and consensus. Now, there a lot of opportunities where we can work in that way.

YI: Sri Lanka was badly hit in 2004 by the tsunami, like Thailand, Indonesia and parts of India. What kind of recovery and rehabilitation programs was your organization involved in?

Suranjan Kudithuwakku: Within two hours of the tsunami, no one knew what kind of a disaster this was and we were shocked and what we did we summoned our group within two hours. There were 3000 volunteers working around the country for the Green Youth Brigade program and then we made six groups out of that - about 200 people - sent them to the six district which were most severely affected. Then within 24 hours, we managed to get a random survey of what happened, find out the real needs of the people. Then we found there were many people already involved but there was a gap - there was no one treating pregnant mothers, and the needs of women and children. We used all the resources we had in our organization for our conservation activities, we called our donors and told them we were going to use the money for this activity. We summoned some of the doctors and we got some of the medicine and the needs of the women and the children, and we immediately went to work with the discriminated and the marginalized groups. We then planned that for the next three to six months, we would move slowly to education, water, sanitation and temporary settlements. Then, we thought we should take advantage of the process that we were branded as a kind of a noisy environmental advocate and we thought that we should use the green concept of rebuilding and reconstruction. We asked land from the government, and the government wondered, thinking how could we do that. But we made a very nice four housing schemes in an area. That was one of our achievements, we built four green villages, whenever people come and ask, we told them we don't build houses, we build homes for the people. We involved everyone in this process and we were able to end up with a kind of community-owned, community-driven disaster relief program. We built with materials from those areas, except for cement, all the building materials were environmentally-friendly.

YI: So that is what you mean by green villages.

Suranjan Kudithuwakku: Yes.

YI: Do you have a disaster prevention program in place?

Suranjan Kudithuwakku: Yes, we call it...the government has a program, but there should be a policy to mitigate disaster. In the Green Movement we have what is known as the Disaster Information and Mitigation Unit. We involve those in and around disaster-prone areas to include it in their disaster management plan, in a community driven disaster management plan. So, we were able to get all the stakeholders, the government, UN agencies and the communities, good information and resources, we are having this kind of a safety village program, community-owned community driven disaster management program. So for, we went to the government and UN agencies and they are all doing very well.

YI: Are any of these local programs linked to regional programs?

Suranjan Kudithuwakku: Yes, we link with some of the disaster regional programs, one is called the Coastal, Environmental and Disaster Prevention program, a kind of USAID-funded program which was started after the tsunami, involving Thailand, Indonesia, Sri Lanka and India. We also have links with some of the international institutions, the UN agency, to link up with South Asian programs, disaster prevention supported by UN agencies. So those are two regional initiatives, and we are also linked with Southeast Asian networks dealing with tsunami issues.

YI: That sounds effective. That has been very informative, very interesting, Mr. Suranjan. Thank you very much for all the information that you have given us.

Suranjan Kudithuwakku: Thank you.