SRI LANKA: Journalists’ Forum Collects Green Success Stories

By Feizal Samath Reprint | | Print |

Feizal Samath

COLOMBO, Mar 17 1998 (IPS) - Appalled by mounds of garbage in Sri Lanka’s capital, a university teacher develops a novel way of recycling waste.

A Buddhist monk spearheads a reforestation project to protect the environment in the jungles of southern Kalutara district, where farmers have recklessly cut trees.

Custom officers set up their own Fauna and Environmental Protection Committee and seize a large number of prohibited items, including birds and animals, being smuggled out of the country.

A rural women’s group sets up a project to turn out bags made of reed with the message “an alternative to polythene and plastics which destroy the fertility of the earth”.

Environmental success stories like these have been publicised by the Sri Lanka Environmental Journalists Forum (SLEJF), an independent group launched in 1987 by Dharman Wickremaratne, then a journalist working for a Sinhalese-language daily.

Helped by colleagues, Wickremaratne has built up the organisation into Sri Lanka’s first media group that focuses on social issues. Another group of journalists set up “Journalists for Children” to work on child-related issues last year.

The SLEJF focuses on improving communications, and training and holding workshops for journalists with an environmental focus. It has several annual publications and produces a monthly newspaper with a circulation of 10,000 copies. It has begun preparing to host the annual congress of the Paris-based International Federation of Environmental Journalists in Colombo next October.

Two years ago in April, the SLEJF decided to organise a competition to select the best environmental projects in Sri Lanka in the decade to 1995. At least 168 entries were received of which the 20 best projects were identified by an independent panel of selectors.

Earlier this month, cash awards were presented to the 20 best projects, after SLEJF journalists had visited the NGOs and written about them in detail. Their stories have been put together in a book, ‘Sri Lanka’s Best Environmental Success Stories’.

The project was funded by NORAD, the Norwegian aid agency, Britain, Australia and others. Aid from Australia helped fund the publication of the book, which focuses on “good news, not bad news… But it is important to remember the bad news too. That creates lessons,” said Embassy spokesman David Henry.

One of the success stories was a garbage recycling project initiated by university lecturer Dr. Ajantha Perera after a visit to Meetotamulla, a few kilometres outside Colombo and believed to be the biggest dump on the island.

Perera decided to do something when she realised that the 800 tonnes of rubbish dumped daily by the city was leaking into a nearby river whose water was used by riverside residents. She organised 21 cooperatives to sort out the waste, an idea which quickly caught on and spread to other parts of Sri Lanka.

Hermon Ferdinando’s small plastic factory at Moratuwa, on the outskirts of the capital city Colombo, which makes plastic goods from waste material also finds mention in the book. Its workers are young mentally or physically disabled and poor people.

The factory produces plastic cane chairs, rubber bushes, plate racks, vegetable racks, steel chairs, grills, gates, wheel barrows — all from garbage collected from the garbage dumps and yards, and from industrial waste in Colombo.

Ferdinando started Seth Sevana (house of benefits) in 1984 with one disabled youth. Now the vocational training and workshop for the disabled, has 30 people. He says he has found employment for more than 30 disabled youths who were trained at his centre, which he hopes to expand, funds permitting.

The pioneering efforts of ‘Sama Sevaya’ (peace service) in introducing settled farming in the dry, central areas of Sri Lanka where ‘chena’ or slash-and-burn cultivation had reduced the green coverage has also been documented.

Model farms were set up, and farmers coaxed to stay in one place. Since 1995, 450 acres of land have been brought under their project. “Unless the clearing of thousands of acres of jungle land for chena cultivation is halted, Sri Lanka will face a grave situation,” Samson Jayasinghe, national secretary of the NGO was quoted saying in the SLEJF book.

As interesting are the efforts of a resident Buddhist monk to start a programme of reforestation in a jungle in the southern

province region of Kalutara that had been indiscriminately cut by slash-and-burn cultivators.

Poruwadande Sumana set up the Gallena Temple Environmental Foundation and experimented with reforesting seven acres of land. The success of his efforts motivated him to expand to 15 acres.

In addition to planting forest trees, about 450 varieties of medicinal plants have also been grown by the green conscious Buddhist monk, the report in the SLEJF book ‘Success Stories’ recounts.

Felicitating the winners this month, the journalists’ forum said: “Notwithstanding obstacles, they forged ahead with their mission with a true humanitarian outlook, preserving their identity at the same time, in order to build an environment- friendly world.”