Not Just Climate Change & Global Warming
By Emil van der Poorten –May 22, 2016
Emil van der Poorten
As one who believes that climate change driven by man’s insistence on refusing to accept that his behaviour is responsible for global warming, I have little doubt that the catastrophic weather we have experienced and are continuing to experience as I write this could have been avoided, to a significant extent, if we lived up to our boast that we Sri Lankans are more intelligent than the ”lesser” mammals!
That said, let’s look at what factors other than willy nilly industrialization, with the attendant indiscriminate use of non-renewable fossil fuels, have contributed to what has been happening in Sri Lanka in the past couple of weeks.
Many in our neck of the woods who are in no danger of being engulfed by floodwaters are living in fear of boulders above their very modest habitations coming loose and burying them in the houses that they occupy. Interestingly, in an area that is extremely rocky, this was never a concern in the past. Why? Because there was vegetation that would have stopped any errant boulder before it could do any damage. Not only are those “guard trees” gone but the steep hillsides have suffered very serious erosion since the clearing of this land. You might well ask, “How did this come about?”
Well, in the “bad old days of Empire” and for several years after Sri Lanka became independent, the hilltops were “Crown reserves,” if I remember the terminology right. It was an offence to, in any way whatsoever, try to change the vegetation there. Similarly, the road (now Highway A10 connecting Kandy & Kurunegala) , had a “Crown road/river reservation” between it and the Dik-Oya, one of the two source streams of the Deduru Oya. This used to be leased to an adjacent land-holder who could only “enjoy” whatever the leased land produced. On no account was the existing vegetation to be changed and that included an absolute prohibition on any type of construction. This prohibition has, seemingly, disappeared because there is a string of habitations and an even more substantial number of eating houses (“hotels”), inclusive of one locally- famous establishment which straddles the Oya concerned! Now isn’t that a “first:” being able to sit down to a meal with a river running under one?!
You would be hard put to find even one of these establishments that has waste disposal of any description. Why should they bother because guess where garbage goes? As for toilets and human-wastes ………..
A little vignette might be appropriate at this point.
