Progressing, Not Knowing Where

By Ranil Senanayake –January 7, 2017

Dr Ranil Senanayake

Sri Lanka has opted to enter the global economic system with a very poor appreciation of the scientific considerations of the different options and paths available. In the global financial system, growth is seen as engine of development, but the source of power that has been chosen to propel that growth is making this nation dangerously vulnerable to the emerging global reality of Climate Change.

Power, as is used in the present context, is energy in a state utilizable for our uses. It is inexorably tied to the economy of any nation. However, power should be categorized into two distinct groups: Internalized power or power that can be generated locally within the boundaries of a given nation and externalized power or power that has to be obtained from outside the nation and has to be imported.

If the rate of growth is constrained by internalized power, it will produce excellent effects vis-à-vis inflationary trends in the economy. Conversely, if growth is dependant on externalized power, the economic system becomes hopelessly locked into whatever inflationary cycle that the external suppliers are prone to, and any internal attempts in controlling it are useless. Given the exponential rise in the environmental and social cost of fossil energy, the wisdom of attempting to develop based on the consumption of externalized fossil power is questionable.

The promotion of the current perverted vision of ‘development’ where massive projects, consuming huge quantities of cement (sixteen times more potent than gasoline in producing fossil carbon dioxide), steel where every ton of is responsible for 1.2 tons of CO2 form the basis of this ‘development’ must be questioned.

Pollution in the Indian Ocean

It is such uninformed ideas of development, of unplanned construction and undervalued human health that seek the creation urban centers carrying a massive fossil carbon footprint. Growth for the sake of growth without directing it towards a nationally accepted plan reeks of self-interest. An example is the promotion of a megapolis without considering the Carbon cost of the air conditioning and coolants needed for such a megapolis. This jump in our Carbon footprint makes us irresponsible in terms of our international obligations to address Climate Change.

As an island state we have not been responsible by the sea around us either. Sri Lanka is exposed as the worst polluter of the Indian Ocean. The new maps on human impact on the world’s oceans are now on the web. Although there had been regular commentary on the need of every government and various authorities to be cognizant of oceanic health, it was a shock to see the evidence that is now before us. The map of the Indian Ocean shows an ugly halo of pollution and ocean impact that rings the ocean around Sri Lanka.

The irresponsible use of our land, cutting the forests, eroding the soil and drenching it with artificial fertilizers and agro/ industrial toxins, finally result in polluting the ocean. The biological indicators of a healthy shoreline are the rock pools, once the rock pools that fringed our shores were alive with fishes and even corals, all the rock pool corals were lost by the 80’s. The inshore corals and the fringing shallow reef was next and finally the deep reef. We saw this national patrimony degrade and disappear within our lifetime. Those who have experienced the biodiversity of the Welawatte canal, before the advent of the textile mills pumping their affluent into it, will know the changes. It was a time when coral reef fish such as Butterfly Fish (Cheatodons ) could be seen under the road bridge at Welawatte. The toxic affluent changed the clear waters to a dark, opaque hue and destroyed all the things that lived in and along the canal. Even at that time, many of us realized the damage that was being done to our inland waters by irresponsible industrialists, predictably the politicians and bureaucrats ignored public concern, but the extent of the damage to the ocean around us was not even remotely realized until the advent of satellite sensing.

A study of the satellite data also indicates that a major source of marine pollution comes from the shipping that goes through our waters, polluting without any care, what will happen, when the dirty, bunker fuel burning, cheap freighters begin to call in at Hambantota?

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