What lessons can we learn from the recent floods in Sri Lanka? Severe damage
has been caused to agriculture and land in over 11 districts. Over a million
people have been affected. Many houses have come down; many earth slips have
killed many people. The heavy rains came at the time when paddy was flowering
and the crop losses would be very heavy. Reduced yields would lead to very high
increase in food prices and would create food shortages. The international
situation is not helpful either and dependence on imports is risky. Price
increases in the essential foods have been serious already and further
increases would be unbearable. It is reported that loss of cattle due to floods
and extra ordinary cold has been very severe too. Already there are demands
from companies to further increase imported milk powder prices.
It may be possible to blame nature for all these but it does not solve the
problems. Natural disasters have to be expected and with increased intensity
due to global warming and climate change. Many more climate change calamities
are to be expected. It is necessary to provide relief to those who cannot face
this situation on their own. But relief alone is not enough, but we have to
learn the lessons that need to be learnt. The disaster is not over, it is just
beginning. Crop losses and food shortages are to come. Diseases caused by
floods are likely to increase, many reservoirs have been damaged and broken,
they need to be repaired. More water shortages are likely to take place. Much
of the top soil would have got eroded and many rivers, streams and reservoirs
would have got silted. Can we remedy these sufficiently rapidly to reduce the
damage.
Will the Government have enough money to do this? Can we borrow more without
further burdening people with unbearable debt. Are we going to learn the lesson
that we should not be intensifying the risks of disasters by causing further
damage in trying to accelerate economic growth?
Manmade additions to disaster
Clearing more forests for further expansion of monoculture plantations, whether
it is sugar cane plantations, banana plantations, pineapple, tobacco or cut
flower would further increase disaster risks or growing more maize for animal
feed, building express highways for facilitating faster transport for
investors, growing more tobacco plantations to meet the needs of companies is
another damage that further increase erosion, loss of soil fertility and other
environmental losses. If we borrow more money we will have to do more exports
to repay the loans, we have to obey advice and dictate of lenders and do what
they want to exploit nature's resources and people more intensely.
A Vicious Circle
So, this is a vicious circle. We decide to provide more facilities to investors
to exploit our people and our nature more extensively. It makes people poorer
and nature more susceptible to disasters. Then we borrow more and make the cost
of living worse. So, we have to give more concessions to investors. To do this
we have to drive away more people from their land, from beaches, from cities
and from villages. Can we push the poorer people from their village lands and
also poorer people from cities at the same time? Where are they going to live
and how are they going to survive?
Created Disaster
We were advised to give people opportunities to sell their land in villages,
give up their food production replacing it with growing more crops for export
or for alcohol and agro fuel. We were told to encourage more people to sell
away their little plots of land to allow land accumulation in the hands of rich
businesses for production of export crops instead of domestic food at
affordable cost. We were advised to allow more space and facilities and tax
concessions to private businesses, asked to privatize water and allow water
marketing, Told to push fisher people away from their beaches and fishing
livelihoods to allow tourism to expand and big fishing industry to take over.
There were attempts made to utilize moneys received for relief to Tsunami
Victims for development of tourism facilities, such as those in Arugambe,
Paanama, Kalpitiya etc. Health was privatized compelling people to pay
unaffordable prices for their medicines, doctors and private hospitals.
Flexible or free labour markets were proposed to allow already employed labour
to be discharged with less compensation.
Similarly, education has been privatized compelling people to spend much more
on private tuition, Private universities were proposed. Finally around 4
million children compete in education aiming for higher education
opportunities, but many of them are dropped off half way. Out of over 250,000
students sitting for advanced level exams about 120,000 get sufficient marks to
enter universities, but universities can admit only about 17,000 every year.
So, over a hundred thousand students who are very intelligent and hard working
are dropped off, no future plans. Worsening food situation will only increase
the already too high a number of malnourished children and anemic mothers, thus
preventing proper brain growth and physical growth of children destroying their
future potential, the future of the whole nation.
Thus, we see that more manmade disasters add on to the natural disasters. The
way agriculture is done today is another serious manmade disaster. We cut of
trees and forests and reduce the effective use of sunlight that is absorbed by
leaves of trees converting them into food for trees and for all living beings,
this also worsens erosion that destroys the top soil that takes thousands of
years to regenerate. We also add poisonous inputs such as chemical weedicides,
pesticides and fertilizer, thereby weakening the ability of the soils to
regenerate soil fertility through microbial activity; we kill insects and
create much stronger and more resistant pests. All this destroys the natural
process of sustainable and regenerative agriculture which is the only sure way
of ensuring survival of life. Destroying natural agriculture is practiced as
the main stream agriculture. Thus we prevent nature's free contribution to
agriculture. This goes on all the time even at times when weather is good. This
may be more destructive than the natural disasters that happen only from time
to time. In doing this we also make the impact of natural disaster much worse.
Fewer trees make the rain fall much more aggressive and erosion much more
intense. Loss of top soil reduces the ability of soil to absorb and retain
water making the droughts more frequent and losses more aggressive. Killing
away microbes weakens the natural cycle and killing away insects weakens the
natural pest control.
All this is known, but no serious attention is given by the policy makers and
implementers to any of these. So, manmade disasters of all this type may be
much more serious than the natural disasters.
If policy makers are unwilling to attend to these the people who are victims of
these have to take it upon themselves to solve these. All these disasters are
preventable.
How ?
People must begin to find their food from nature if they do not have enough
money to buy them. Learn how nature gives free food. Protect and improve soil
fertility by preventing erosion, begin with your small plot of land by building
ridges, mulching and growing trees for soil fertility. Recycle all your organic
matter, the leaves, branches and also animal dung and urine.
Maximize the absorption of sunlight by growing more trees to fill your land,
growing trees to different canopies is the best way to maximize sunlight. This
can also enhance your energy supply, fodder, timber and medicinal plants in
addition to food.
Recycle all organic waste and organic matter after use. Save your natural seeds
and set up plant nurseries to reduce the need to buy seeds and plants, Avoid
using F-1 variety seeds because they cannot regenerate seeds. Use animal dung
and urine to produce natural fertilizers and improve natural fertility.
Increase diversification of crops and use mix cropping to reduce pest attacks
and improve natural control of pests. Improve food diversity and nutrition by
growing a multiplicity of food crops, use the indigenous knowledge of use of
medicinal plants to prevent ill health and cure diseases where possible.
Apply principles of agro forestry to improve forest cover and catchment areas.
Avoid using destructive, poisonous chemical inputs to prevent pollution of food,
soil , water and environment.
organize marketing of products directly between communities of producers and
communities of consumers, thereby reducing the losses made in trade through
middlemen.
Teach children in schools, and at higher levels the principles of natural
farming and the necessity of shifting to natural farming and to recover the
ability of regeneration of nature and its resources.
Struggling to prevent destruction.
It is high time that we take up measures to protect scientific agriculture of
the right type. Companies are given a free hand to propagate and market very
destructive poisonous chemical pesticides, weedicides and fertilizers. They
also freely market seeds that do not produce fertile seeds and are in the
process of promoting genetically modified seeds and foods. All kinds of
artificial foods that cause diseases such as diabetes, cancers and a host of
other diseases are easily propagated, advertized and marketed. As explained
already these are causing major disasters in the country. It has now become
fairly clear that chemical fertilizers increase kidney diseases, chemically
contaminated food reduces immunity in the body thus making more people
susceptible to all kinds of diseases. All these are done with the blessings of
people at the highest levels. They have also introduced certain types of ethics
in the media that prevents direct reference to companies that cause these
problems. Many such companies make use of Government departments to propagate
their markets.
It is necessary for people to take up direct battles to prevent these
disasters. Disaster risk reduction should include these too. There is a need
for people's plans to introduce these remedies. Forth coming paradeshiya shaba
elections is a good opportunity for people to work out their plans at local
level and present their advantages and campaign for these. Funds allocated for
village level programmes such as the "Api Wawamu Rata Nagamu", "Gama Neguma",
"Gemi Diriya", "Maga Neguma" are more than enough to meet the requirements of
the above disaster prevention plans at village level.
Such a strategy could harness the full creative potential of the people and the
regenerative potential of nature. The slogan should be;
" Restore the ability of nature to regenerate itself and its resources".
This is a principle that should guide the future of the whole world. Nature has
created all life , protected it and provided sustenance all this time. Now we
have begun to destroy its ability to do so by destroying regenerative ability
of nature. Now it's necessary that the whole of humanity must restore this
ability for their own survival in the future
Sri Lanka has all the advantages of such a plan. We have good sunlight, good
rain fall, good diversity of plants and bio diversity, very suitable
geographical setting to develop natural irrigation systems, still remaining
indigenous knowledge of natural agriculture and natural health ( ayurvedic
medicine ), very high diversity of medicinal plants and food plants, Indigenous
knowledge of cooking and preparation of herbal medicines. We also have a rich
knowledge of working out agricultural technology utilizing nature's ways.
Indiginous philosophical resources
The Buddhist understanding of non attachment and non greed and the futility of
accumulation of profits gives us very valuable guidelines to plan our ways of
dealing with nature and dealing with other living beings. Combining these
valuable resources of Buddhist Philosophy, indigenous natural farming and
indigenous medicine is a valuable combination of resources that can guide us
away from disasters.
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