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| Sunday, 27 October 2002 |
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SLAAS protests sale of Meteorology Department land to the British High Commission Sri Lanka Association for the Advancement of Science joins several others in voicing its protest on the sale of part of the Meteorology Department land to the British High Commission to construct a building to house their offices. The Department and its predecessor, the Colombo Observatory, has been in existence for over 100 years at the present site collecting valuable meteorological data on a continuous basis. These data have been valuable not only for Sri Lanka but also for the entire South and South Asia. Though not appreciated very much by the general public, meteorology data play an important role not only in forecasting day-to-day weather but also in making international aviation traffic in and out of Katunayake airport possible. The fact that there is no land mass below Sri Lanka down to the Antarctica, makes meteorological data from Sri Lanka all the more valuable even on a global scale. It is therefore imperative that the supply of meteorological data taken from the Colombo Observatory its maintained without a break. Among the meteorological parameters recorded at the Meteorological Department are daily maximum and minimum temperatures, daily precipitation and wind speed and directions. The measuring equipment and methodologies conform to standards established by WMO, which require that the measurements sites maintain a minimum distance from buildings, which could affect both the temperature and wind measurements. Regrettably, the sprawling land of the Department facing a main highway has been the focus of attention for many looking for land for development work. There had been even attempts previously to shift the entire Department to a location outside the city, but these moves were resisted by the Department arguing that such a move would disrupt the continuity of data, making Colombo data invalid for long-term trend analysis. More recently, the British High Commission has been agitating for part of the land from the east end, which was adjoining the residence of the British High Commissioner. The Department has been resisting this move initially, but when the order came again from the highest authority, the government protocol prevented the Department officials from making any objections. We understand that various officials from other related organizations such as the Ministry of Science and Technology, the national Science and Technology Commission, and the Treasury have expressed their concerns on this transaction, but there was nothing that they could do when the order came from higher authorities. Our government if facing crisis situations with regard to political, economic and ethnic issues, and we are dependent on the goodwill of powerful countries such as Great Britain for maintaining our economy at the current level. We also take cognizance of the fact that the success of the current peace negotiations depend heavily on their cooperation. Under such a scenario, when the British High Commissioner makes a request for land, whether reasonable or not, the Government tends to oblige. We the scientists feel that the British High Commissioner did wrong in getting over 2 acres released in their favour, making the request during bilateral discussions. The importance of recording continuous and accurate meteorological data could be exemplified from the fact that it requires only a few degree Celsius change in the global mean temperature to trigger a catastrophe such as global warming or an ice age. In fact, the global mean temperature has remained constant within half a degree during the last 10,000 years except during the last century, when it has increased by 0.6 degrees C. In order to elicit such a small long-term variation from data having wide short-term fluctuations necessitates total elimination of externalities such as discontinuities of records, shifting of sites etc. The authorities in the High Commission should be well aware of these facts, but have opted to ignore them for self-interest. The High Commission offers various financial and technical assistance schemes to uplift the science and technology status in the country, but, all that is negated when they attempt to disrupt the existing systems. On behalf of the scientific community in Sri Lanka and world over, we appeal to the British High Commission to seek land elsewhere without disrupting a national meteorology system having linkage to international system of data gathering. We hope that he will be gracious enough to part with this land, without giving priority for the convenience of having the HC offices adjoining his residence. Dr. Janaka Ratnasiri, General President SLAAS |
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