By Feizal Samath
COLOMBO, Jul 8 1999 (IPS)

Sri Lankan green groups, which have successfully forced the government to consider environment- friendly projects, stand accused by a government minister of acting on behalf of their international supporters.

Irrigation and Power Minister General Anuruddha Ratwatte, who has been forced to delay or abandon power and irrigation projects due to opposition from non-governmental groups (NGOs), said they were “influence peddling”.

“We find that rather than being the watchdogs of community interest, some NGOs have become vehicles of influence peddling, mouthing platitudes more to attract … foreign funds rather than due to preoccupation with national interests,” he said.

Ratwatte who has been minister since 1994, did not choose to name the groups but NGO circles believe he was referring to church-funded groups and to the Environmental Foundation Ltd (EFL), both of which have been very active in Sri Lanka.

Independent groups funded by the Roman Catholic Church are backing a people’s movement against a proposed 900 MW coal power plant in Puttalam, a town in the coastal northwest of Sri Lanka.

The government says it would meet 25 percent of the country’s power requirements by the year 2004 but residents and green groups warn that the power plant would pollute the coastal area and pose a health hazard.

Protests have forced the government to suspend the scheme, on which work did not really take off after the initial demarcation of the project site.

Jagath Gunawardene, a well-known Sri Lankan environmentalist, also thinks the minister, who doubles as deputy minister of defence, is annoyed with the church for publicly criticising the army’s take-over of a historic church in the war-torn northwest.

The Catholic Church made public its dismay when government troops who stormed the town of Madhu refused to move out of a 350-year-old church, venerated by Christians, in April this year.

Ratwatte refused a request by the Catholic Bishop of Mannar for government troops to move out of the immediate vicinity of the Madhu church premises.

Mannar Bishop Rayappu Joseph, in an Apr. 5 letter to Sri Lanka’s President Chandrika Kumaratunga, said government troops were using Tamil refugees living in camps at Madhu church as a “human” shield against Tamil rebels, and wanted them to vacate the place.

Since then all the refugees have been moved out by the government to other welfare camps in Sri Lanka’s north. The refugees have been uprooted by fierce fighting that has raged for most of the last 16 years between the government and Tamil separatist rebels.

“I think the minister is angry with Church groups for both these reasons,” Gunawardene said.

The government has been uneasy with the proliferation of Church-funded NGOs in the northern areas and speculation on their possible links to Tamil rebels has never died down.

Minister Ratwatte’s remarks were made at a regional meeting in the capital city Colombo June 28 to discuss a ‘Water Vision for South Asia’ and formulate a regional plan.

Sri Lanka, India, Pakistan, Nepal and Bangladesh presented country reports, with an assessment of the current situation and their water needs by the first quarter of the next century.

Delays in the implementation of government or private-sector hydroelectric and irrigation schemes were blamed on environmentalists by Sri Lanka’s business community.

But there was some praise for green groups in this country from the Asian Development Bank (AsDB) and other inter- governmental agencies.

The AsDB’s Colombo office, in an internal document on NGOs in Sri Lanka, says that environmental groups have been much more successful than other NGOs campaigning for more environmentally- friendly policies. The AsDB particularly praised the role of the EFL in this context.

EFL has run several campaigns against many projects planned by Ratwatte’s Power and Irrigation Ministry of the grounds of environmental degradation and pollution. Many projects have been challenged in court by EFL.

An environmental specialist at the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) was also of the view that environmental groups

played a key role in Sri Lanka. “We enlist the services of many environment groups and community-based organisations for our projects because of their expertise in this area,” she said.

Earlier this year, the World Bank invited environmentalists in Sri Lanka to a core committee that would work together in Bank- funded green projects.

“Since the Bank and the NGO movement are both keen on environmental projects that benefit the country and the community, we believe in working together,” said Sumith Pilapitiya, specialist on environmental affairs at the World Bank’s Colombo office.

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