SRI LANKA Colombo announces new highways, environmentalists denounce deforestation

Sri Lanka ranks fourth in the world in primary forest destruction. According to environmentalists, it will affect 39 national parks. The infrastructure will also cross the Kelani, Kalu, Bentara and Nilwala river valleys, areas where farmers are already struggling with the effects of climate change.

Colombo (Asia News) – At the end of June, President Ranil Wickremesinghe presented the update of the “National Physical Planning 2048”, which was launched in 2011 and, according to the Colombo government, will mark a significant change in the country’s urban and territorial development . Urban Development and Housing Minister Prasanna Ranatunga said that the relationship between urban and rural areas, as well as the protection of the natural landscape, had been taken into account during the planning. The preparation of the “National Physical Planning 2048” was in charge of the Department of National Physical Planning, which will also control the execution of the works.

Ravindra Kariyawasam, an environmentalist and national coordinator of the Center for Environmental and Nature Studies, has a different opinion on the impact of the works to be carried out, fearing large-scale environmental destruction of the country and increased consumption of floor. All this would already be taking place in Sri Lanka “at least since National Physical Planning was launched in 2011. The government is hiding what has been done and is causing environmental destruction everywhere, covering up the real interests of the project”.

According to a report by the Center for Environmental and Nature Studies, approximately more than 28 hectares (64 acres) of forest are destroyed every day in Sri Lanka. “This will soon lead to the privatization of water in Sri Lanka as well,” explains Ravindra. The Study Center presented the results of its monitoring at the NM Perera de Boralle Institute in Colombo, where ecologist Kariyamaditte Gnanarama Thero stated: “The government’s plan includes the development of a new highway network across the country, which should be add to what already exists. Many forests will disappear. It will even affect 39 national parks. Without forgetting that the drastic drop in the percentage of forests that cover the territory will increase the impact of extreme phenomena -such as floods and droughts- produced by climate change”.

The road network projected by the “National Physical Planning 2048” will also cross the valleys of the Kelani, Kalu, Bentara and Nilwala rivers, areas where the inhabitants are facing numerous floods and farmers have been forced to abandon their fields by force of the increasingly intense rains. “The main reason for these hydrogeological disturbances is precisely the construction of the Sinharajaya Kudava Road and the Sinharajaya Deniya Lankagama Road, which day after day reduce significant portions of forests. It is an environmental bomb authorized by the National Physical Planning”, concludes Ravindra Kariawasam.

According to a study carried out by Global Forest Torch, Food and Agriculture Organization and Goutham Burg University, Sri Lanka currently ranks 4th in destruction of primary forests, that is, those intact forests whose ecosystem remains in its original state because they have never been affected by human activities of an industrial or agricultural nature.