SRI LANKA: Go Slow on Oil Palm Plantations, Activists Say

By Feizal Samath Reprint | | Print |

Feizal Samath

COLOMBO, Feb 14 2002 (IPS) - Sri Lanka is replacing some of its traditional rubber plantations with oil palm, a controversial move that first drew criticism from the rubber industry and is now drawing the ire of environmentalists.

In arguing its case, the rubber industry concedes that rubber has fallen from grace as an economical crop that is also a main export product. But it also points out the rubber tree’s many advantages — including the prevention of soil erosion.

For their part, environmentalists are listing more dangers like the sapping of water resources and use of killer pesticides in plantations of oil palm, which is a popular export crop by other Asian countries like Malaysia and Indonesia and is fast replacing rubber there.

“The loss of biodiversity and the seepage of factory effluents are just some of the bad effects from oil palms,” says Hemantha Withanage, executive director of the Environmental Foundation Ltd (EFL), the country’s top environment watchdog.

The issue turned violent in October last year, when residents backed by local politicians in the southern district of Galle attacked oil palm nurseries and assaulted a 62-year-old Malaysian consultant who worked for Watawala Plantations Ltd there, Hasan Aziz bin Mohamed.

Hasan suffered injuries in the eyes and the back and after a few weeks at a Colombo hospital flew back to Kuala Lumpur, vowing not to return.

“They warned him — go back, no oil palm,” recalled Vish Govindasamy, managing director at Watawala Plantations, in which India’s multinational Tata Group has a 4 million U.S. dollar investment.

No one has been arrested for the attack and the Planters Association, representing Watawala and two other companies involved in oil palm, has spoken of political interference and indifference by the police and government authorities in dealing with the problem. Tata halted further investments in the Watawala project.

The crisis had blown up a year before the attack, when villagers complained that the Watawala’s 2,000-hectare plantation was draining water resources and responsible for a drought.

A team of experts from the Plantations Ministry did an environmental impact study and found there was little or no impact on the environment.

Govindasamy said his company believed that the issue was more to do with land- grabbing than environment, with frequent encroachment by villages at the Watawala plantations. “The encroachment problem is a big headache. We have already given 300 hectares to the state,” he said in a recent interview.

In January, rubber research director Dr L M K Tillekeratne raised concerns over replacing rubber with oil palm, saying that rubber was a much more valuable crop that oil palm and that Sri Lanka should be cautious in proceeding with this experiment.

“Rubber is more versatile and has greater potential for value addition than oil palm,” he said in a statement, stressing that rubber provides forest cover and helps protect forest reserves as well as provides timber for furniture. Unlike rubber, he said, there was no use for the trunk and branches of oil palm.

The remarks drew fire from Malaysian experts, who said that oil palm plantations in Malaysia had been an enormous success and that rubber is gradually being replaced with oil palm.

Newspapers in recent weeks have also been carrying comments and letters reflecting pro and anti-oil palm comments.

Rubber production and prices have been falling sharply in Sri Lanka over the years, due to a combination of the acquisition of state rubber land for other purposes and the fall in world market prices.

Rubber acreage has been shrinking rapidly in the past 25 years. Along with tea and coconut, rubber has been Sri Lanka’s main export crop for more than a century.

Last week, the Sri Lanka Green Movement warned that turning to oil palm would destroy the country’s green cover and make the soil infertile. “Large extents of land have been brought under oil palm cultivation in the hill and mid country, and such land has become infertile with rivers and springs drying up,” the group said in a statement.

Among the dangers, it said, were the increase in 30 kinds of insects that require the use of insect repellents, and the spread of bacterial germs that also need anti-bacterial substances.

In the Galle district, Parisara Mithuro (Friends of the Environment) movement says there is evidence to show that oil palms has ruined the environment. “We have seen wells dry up. We have witnessed the slow death of bird and animal species like dogs, pigs and crows,” noted Sena Kalehiwatte, the group’s founder who led the campaign against Watawala Plantations.

“There are no longer any crows here. The skins of dogs and pigs have become infested with sores due to the effects of the oil palm,” he was quoted as saying by the ‘Sunday Observer’ newspaper. A journalist from the newspaper who toured the Galle region and areas where oil palms are planted however said was no evidence to support this claim.

But EFL’s Withanage said oil palm absorbs a lot of water and needs a high level of pesticides. “This leads to contamination of water, soil and the killing of insects such as butterflies.”

Since little local research has been done on the subject, he said, EFL is now translating a 56-page research document by the World Rainforest Movement on oil palms into local languages for the benefit of environmentalists.