Who is being true to conservation ?

[Guest guest]

www.island.lk 5th April 2003

Features

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Features

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Changing the laws of conservation:

 

By Rohan Wijesinha

Features

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Who will come to see carcasses of wild creatures?

Who is being true to conservation?

 

At the WNPSs meeting, the current Project Director of the Asian Development

Bank’s Protected Area and Wildlife Conservation Project (PAMWCP) described

the FFPO as being ‘archaic’ and requiring change. To him, as he explained,

one of the most important things about the amendments was that it now gave

the DWLC the power to inspect the building plans for hotels in the buffer zones!

 

This was in sharp contrast to the stance of two representatives from the

DWLC at the meeting, the Director General and the Additional Director, who

both emphasised the need for strengthening the punitive and enforcement

measures of the FFPO even further.

 

Mr. Edmund Wilson, the Additional Director, reported that 1369 elephants had

been killed between 1990 and 2001. He emphasised that in addition to the

enforcement of the FFPO, the DWLC’s duties should be the further declaration

of Protected Areas, the habitat enrichment of Protected Areas, conservation,

education, extension work and the resolution of the Human/Elephant conflict.

 

I wonder whether he is aware that according to the Action Plan for the DWLC

in the ‘Regain Sri Lanka’ Programme being pushed before Parliament the DWLC

is " ...to be made into a Department of Wildlife & National parks that will

be the primary eco-tourism provider. The Forest Department is to be made

into a Department of Wilderness Areas, which will be the custodian of

biodiversity. "

 

Today, 85% of the Protected Areas have been preserved under the custody of

the DWLC, assisted by the strict interpretations of the FFPO, whereas a mere

12% is with the Forestry Department. Hardly surprising, as the ethos of the

Forestry Department is the sustainable exploitation of natural resources

whereas that of the DWLC is conservation!

 

Flawed principles

 

These proposals are not the overnight brainwave of a contorted mind bent on

the destruction of the wilderness; rather is it a meticulously planned coup

by a small group to gain control over all of the precious biodiversity of

this country to strip it for personal gain? Fundamental to this is the

Biodiversity Action Plan which promotes all these projects and changes.

 

Dr. Ranil Senanayake, the well known Systems Ecologist, speaking at the

WNPS’s meeting described " ...this action plan as being fundamentally flawed

and impossible to consider in any national process...attempts to smuggle in

a new act under the guise of amendments should be looked at very critically. "

 

Plans to privatise the Parks, initially the Gal Oya National Park, are also

highlighted in the ‘Regain Sri Lanka’ document. Mr. Jagath Gunawardena has

dealt extensively with the illegalities and dangers to conservation of this

proposal in his article in The Island of March 19, 2003.

 

It is not just national parks that are earmarked for such treatment in this

astonishing document, but also areas of cultural heritage.

 

For example, proposals are afoot to privatise Sigiriya.

 

In the corporate world, this is all termed asset-stripping. Carving up an

entity and selling its component pieces generates a far greater income than

the sale of the whole. In the field of conservation, " sustainable

development " is a facade that is being used to cloak exploitation, and the

law is being changed to enable this to happen.

 

Botanist Mala Amarasinghe feared that the changes to the FFPO seemed to be

geared to increase accessibility to genetic resources, something that the

FFPO blocks at present.

 

Bio-piracy is the name of the game!

 

Add to this Regain Sri Lanka’s wish to alter the powers of the Customs

Service to remove their jurisdiction on matters of biodiversity,

transferring that task to the new Biodiversity Department with its new

management (as proposed by the Action Plan) and the real motives become clear!

 

Hoodwinking the nation

 

A feature of the initial stages ADB Project was its lack of transparency;

the public being unaware of its dangerous intent until the project was about

to be implemented. One would have thought that lessons had been learnt from

this.

 

By accident, the WNPS received a document intimating the changes that were

to be made to the FFPO and to its credit, called an open meeting. This

meeting was not an initiative of either the DWLC or the Ministry.

 

Having learned from past experience, the WNPS also had the good sense to

tape the proceedings of that meeting — a true record of what was said. The

transcript makes interesting reading. Astonishingly, the present Project of the ADB Project, the former Director of the DWLC, when

challenged, denied that a condition of the project was not only the

amendment of the FFPO but also it being superseded by entirely new

legislation by the 5th year of the project.

 

Even more astounding was the sarcastic query by the Ministry’s Consultant of

the statement in the WNPS’s last newsletter that these changes to the FFPO

were at the behest of the ADB.

 

Records show that this Consultant apart from playing a leading role in the

formulation of the National Wildlife Policy, was also a part of most of the

planning for the ADB Project from it very inception. He even went on record

to chide a Presidential Task Force on wildlife for criticising the project!

 

" ...even if we were to recommend changes, I am confident that neither the

Government nor the ADB would entertain them. Changes at this stage would

seriously undermine government credibility, and the already shaky confidence

the ADB/GEF/World Bank consortium that is putting together this package has

in this country and its systems will be further eroded... "

 

This was when the ADB project was still hidden from the public. Fortunately,

most of the Task Force were horrified by what was being planned and blew the

whistle. For the Consultant’s and Project Director’s benefit, I refer them

to Page 11, Paragraph 1 of their own policy document, the Report and

Recommendation to the Board of Directors of the Asian Development Bank

(2000) which states,

 

....the FFPO of 1937 will be amended to make specific provision for several

policy priorities, including participatory PA management and benefit

sharing, ecotourism development, involvement of the private sector, and ex

situ conservation activities. The amended FFPO will be superseded by

entirely new legislation before the end of project year 5, which will be

collaboratively developed in the light of the Biodiversity Conservation

Action Plan...

 

It seems that transparency is still far from the minds of those managing

this project. The people and the government of this Nation continue to be

hoodwinked!

 

An age of disgrace

 

Wildlife and the environment are now in the hands of its greatest enemies,

exploiters. Collectors and exporters are employed as consultants,

businessmen are in charge of environmental institutions and others, even

one-time opponents of this project, have sold out for the instant profit

offered by the financial rewards on offer for treachery. Nearly all of the

few who supported this project now hold high office in institutions of

conservation or have been offered lucrative consultancies by their benefactors.

 

Everyone has a price and even more will queue up to bid for the lucrative

tenders that will be on offer with the proposed privatisation of the

national parks and zoos. The days of conservation in Sri Lanka, and its

history of 2500 years, are drawing to an end. The aim now is to make money

as soon as possible, and damn the future!

 

Some wars for natural resources can be won by superior weaponry and dubious

crusades in the name of freedom. Others can be won by surreptitiously

stealing the natural treasures from a land and its people, with the help of

a few — a well paid few, in the name of aid!

 

Mr. Wilson began his presentation on the DWLC with the words ‘It was the

traditional duty of Sinhala Kings to give protection to wild beasts, birds

and fishes...their inspiration was religious. " That surely was a golden age

of conservation. Today, with policies and national strategies determined by

businessmen with self-aggrandisement and instant profit uppermost in their

minds, we are surely entering an age that future generations will refer to

as the Age of Disgrace and Degradation — certainly for conservation.

 

 

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