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| Sunday, 31 October 2004 |
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Sethusamudram Canal - where is the SACEP ? - Prof. C. Suriyakumaran The Sethusamudram Canal, in so far as it has created concern in Sri Lanka, is potentially also a project of international concern. The direct parties are of course India and Sri Lanka, with other future 'users' still measuring their own potential interests.
All this apart, the main purpose of setting down what follows is to point out, sharply and clearly, that the countries of South Asia - from Iran, through Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, Sri Lanka, Maldives, Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh (with Myanmmar as Observer) set up in March 1981, an International, United Nations recognized, Inter-Country Body, called the "South Asia Co-operative Environment Programme" (SACEP), with an excellent fourteen-point agenda, embracing the priority environmental and natural resource issues and problems of the region, on which they pledged to work together, indeed, each of the nine countries also creating chosen subject area country 'Focal Points' (e.g. Pakistan for the Himalayas), and pledging to work, jointly, towards confronting all major environmental issues of the Future, with dedication and application towards 'agreed solutions'. In this, the programme area of the 'Regional Seas' was vested in Sri Lanka. Indeed, as we should know, Sri Lanka was also chosen as the headquarters of this programme and organisation, which has functioned here since March 1981 (even before SAARC came into being shortly thereafter). Initiative One does not mind emphasising - for certainty of the foregoing - the initiative of this writer, in conceptualising and carrying this major United Nations initiative to its conclusion, with tremendous support from those like the late Sunil Roy of India, Tagi Ebtekar of Iran, and others from Pakistan, Bangladesh and of course here, at that time led by the then President Premadasa himself and his redoubtable Secretary, K.H.J. Wijedasa. (Parallel initiatives for ASEAN and the South Pacific were already completed by this time, thus giving of their experience before the UN's coming to South Asia. It is sad - indeed extremely so - that while we have allowed the Sethusamudram issue to grow into a controversy, this organization, SACEP, never initiated anything on it, even before it became an issue here, has still not done so, and has left the entire regional public ignorant as to whether it will. SACEP should really, and still can, set its useful mechanisms in motion, in the most suitable ways - as we know in international endeavours - and even now undertake its own in-depth study and report, for itself as an organisation, and for India and Sri Lanka as service, as envisaged precisely in such situations for its participating countries. One must look forward very much, therefore, to see what this organisation would do. Neither country indeed need fear. As in such situations, and in other comparable historical examples elsewhere, dispassionate, in-depth studies would, more likely than not, produce - (a) results of mutual benefit; of various type; (b) recommendations for precautionary, or conjoint, measures not voiced at present purely for lack of mutual contact, but which either of the concerned countries could concede or extend, without detrimental to itself; c) the long-term Project interest and overall outcome of the entire Initiative. That is the nature of true environment-economic assessment. ( Prof. C. Suriyakumaran was Former UNEP Global Director for education training and technical assistance; (Regional Director for Asia-Pacific; and United Nations - Sasakawa World Environment Laureate) |
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The immediate high concern in Sri Lanka has, it seems, not permitted
the best in-depth Enviro-Economic Integrated Cost Benefit Evaluation - as
is indeed possible to undertake (C.F. Suriyakumaran, 'The Methodology of
Environment and Development Management', CRDS 1992; Lawrence Summers,
Harvard Lectures on combined Enviro-Economic Cost Benefit; Jan Tinbergen,
'GNP and Market Prices: Wrong Signals For Sustainable Economic Success
That Mask Environmental Destruction, U.N.E.S.C.O. 1991; and others)
