Community participation, a must:

'Grow more trees and avoid adhoc beautification'

By Shanika Sriyananda

With the latest trend of paving gravel roads, home gardens, recreational areas and pavements with cement bricks, surface water absorbed into the ground has been obstructed to a great extent, warned Prof Champa Navaratne, Head of the Agriculture Engineering Faculty of the University of Ruhuna.

“ It is nice to have a clean environment but it is equally important to consider having natural water retention facilities to prevent floods. These obstructions will also lead to shrinking of ground water resources as rain water is flowing through drains to the sea without adding to ground water ”, she said in an interview with the Sunday Observer.

She said with rapidly dwindling forest cover, the country’s ground water quality and volume was decreasing. “ The community has a responsibility to grow more trees and avoid adhoc beautifications that obstruct the natural ground water absorbing cycle by paving with cement bricks or tar”, she pointed out .

Prof Navaratne, who is also an executive committee member of Netwater, said most of the wetlands which absorbed and retained rain water were now covered and the remaining surfaces were left to absorb rain water were also being paved with cement bricks, letting the water to run off and flow into the sea. Explaining about climate change and its repercussions that aggravated the country’s weather pattern, Prof. Navaratne said the community has a huge responsibility to contribute significantly to reduce the bad effects of climate change. She said state institutions, universities and NGO’s working on climate issues need to have more awareness programs to educate communities on their responsibilities on reducing triggers that lead to climate change.“ The University of Ruhuna has begun a case study with the villagers of Kadawedduwa which is on the left bank of the Nilwala river to educate them on their responsibility of retaining some amount of run off rain water without letting it to flow into the Nilwala river”, she said. According to Prof. Navaratne, the Nilwala river overflowis three times a year, destroying the paddy cultivation and other crops.

Being the third longest river in the country, the Nilwala river runs through Deniyaya town, Morawaka, Akuressa and reaches the city of Matara where it joins the Indian Ocean at Thotamuna. While it helps to irrigate tea, rubber, paddy, and other crops like cardamom, cinnamon and vegetables, the Nilwala river creates during the rainy season.

“ We hope this model study will help to find out how community responsibility can be used effectively to prevent disasters like floods”, she said.

She said the Nilwala river was selected as a huge amount of money was being spent to pump excessive water to the sea through three main pumping

houses which are run on diesel during the rainy season. “ This process takes place to protect paddy and other crop cultivation from floods. When the cost of fuel is added to a kilo of rice produced in this area, it will cost thousands of rupees”, Prof. Navaratne said adding that the study will also help to reduce the burning of fuel, which in turn helps to reduce carbon dioxide emission into the atmosphere.“ We think villagers can retain a greater amount of water in their gardens, without permitting surface water to just flow into the river”,she said..

Prof Navaratne said when considering about community responsibility, the mother of a family unit has a greater responsibility to educate her children and also to minimize damage to the environment that would lead to major climate disasters.

“ The community responsibility should begin from home. As a mother, she needs to enable her children to grow with nature.Present day mothers are restricted and unable to convey this message to their children as they are involved with other activities. it is paramount that she spends time with her children and teach them the value of nature. When children grow with nature they will naturally be nature lovers.We should start this right now”, she said.

Explaining about the effects of climate change in Sri Lanka, she raised the alarm about repercussions that would hit the country as an island especially because it was a tropical country.“ We know the reason for climate change. The emission of green house gases (GHGs) due to human activity.

When we compare Sri Lanka’s carbon footprint with other developing countries, we can be happy as it is very less. We don’t contribute significantly to the increasing GHGs in the atmostpehre. We are ten times or even less than the world average”, she said. “ But”, Prof Navaratne said “ we are confronted with the harmful effects of GHGs as we experience frequent flooding , droughts and more warmer weather conditions”.She said the change in rainfall patterns is the main change which affects the country and scientists in the world, including Sri Lankan experts are still trying to identify the changes in weather patterns but it is unpredictable.

“ They have tested our data with many models but couldn’t fixed our data into those models and are unable get the correct picture regarding the changes in weather patterns. This is why we still can't predict when the south west monsoon starts. it keeps changing and this has affected paddy cultivation as we cultivation depends on our rain fall pattern”, she said.

She said apart from talking about repercussions of climate change like shrinking water resources, floods, droughts and social issues due to displacement also need to be taken into consideration.

“Finally it will become a social issue with many displaced people. The government has to pour monetary allocations kept aside for development to address these social issues and give humanitarian assistance for the people”, she said. Prof. Navaratne alsoraised the alarm about impending disasters that Sri Lanka as an island might face due to increasing global warming with melting glaciers and the sea level rising gradually.“ When temperature is increasing, sea water also increases. As an island, we will lose the land area around the country.

We have 103 major rivers and normally due to excessive sand mining for the construction industry, the country’s river depths were deepening. With increasing sea levels, sea water will intrude into rivers making river water saline.

This process will make fertile agricultural lands barren”, she warned.

Meanwhile, she said if the erratic weather patterns continue, Sri Lanka will have a direct and negative impact on the agricultural sector in Sri Lanka.

“ Floods will remain to be another serious cause that will affect the agriculture sector in the country”, she stressed. She said that community responsibility would play a vital role in reducing the gravity of floods, as they rain water harvesting and building tanks could be done in home gardens. “ This would be a key factor to contain floods in the country”, she said.

Prof Navaratne said the quality of water has also reduced due to climate change and water conservation has become a challenge.