Conservation must be broad-based urgently

Sri Lanka is still bleeding. Decades of strife resulted in our lands running red with blood and dampened with sweat and tears. On the surface, the blood has stopped flowing, but the country is still haemorrhaging in so many ways. A nation in economic bankruptcy, we are now rushing to embrace environmental bankruptcy as if it were our natural destiny. Our politicians are destroying and giving away our most valued national treasures irrespective of them being already “protected” by legislation and authorities. Our natural wealth is being diminished at an alarming rate. Our intellectual capital is being drained to the extent that one wonders what the bottom will retain. Our nation’s brightest young minds and the nationally productive educated upper middle class have taken wing in a migration frenzy of no return, unlike that of the birds who visit us for winter. Entrepreneurship and capital have largely flown the coop. Legal checks and balances, and free media have been weakened to a point where one almost doubts their existence.

Against this backdrop, the existing resources available to drive conservation in Sri Lanka are woefully inadequate. There certainly are some very committed, competent and passionate people within the many institutions tasked with conservation in Sri Lanka. But the relevant departments are understaffed so greatly that they can barely manage even the minimal levels of protection. Many key officials are heavily under-skilled and untrained, and not provided exposure to more modern forms of conservation, research and wildlife management. The machinery and technology available in the country lags behind the needs of our nation, which is a biodiversity hotspot and requires sophisticated tools as much as loving care. The entities and institutions which exist in the country are not adequately in sync with global trends. And yet, a national “fear-factor” is created which prevents a far stronger private sector engagement in conservation within Sri Lanka. We have evolved the private sector to play active roles within critical areas like healthcare, education, transportation, telecommunication, security and energy among many others. But in the realm of conservation, they are not seen as partners who can actively contribute to a better future for our ecosystems. Key words like biopiracy, trafficking of animal parts and our endemic natural ingredients for drugs are immediately at the forefront of these discussions. While these issues and dangers are real, there seems little willingness to look at how to manage these challenges while extracting the best of what the private sector can bring to the table. We see examples from African nations who have let the private sector be far more engaged in conservation. The result is larger added land banks coming under conservation and far better technologies and modern trends being adopted, Artificial Intelligence being leveraged and much more private capital flowing into wildlife and landscape management along with touristic potential. The private sector is seen investing in rehabilitation centres, park management technologies, training, research engagements, large scale laboratories and in people and skills. Even areas like medicine and new drug development are unlikely to flourish here since we simply have not made the large institutional investments within Sri Lanka. Surely, these can be managed so that the benefits accrue to all sides in an equitable manner. Were the debates against private healthcare any different a while back?

These trends also provide smart young kids with great opportunities to nurture their dreams and ambitions, while the facilitating environment encourages global giants and donors to bring us their best tools, resources and people to help conserve. In the field of research, by being ultra restrictive, suspicious, and narrow minded, our knowledge pool is being weakened by the day. While prior examples within conservation of large private sector institutional investments being cold shouldered are known in Sri Lanka, one does not even hear of any potential investment for conservation being rejected any more, simply because no one even bothers to knock on our doors, knowing it is a fait accompli. Access to more foreign and local scientists to pursue research has to come about if we want to benefit from global learning. Our talent pool is simply too small to rely on those studying overseas to return, bringing their insights back with them to our country. Our regulatory framework is so inflexible on areas like sample gathering, genetics, DNA and other testing, research, and animal handling, and will most likely stifle intellectual progress locally. Our scientific doors are closed, our species kept under house arrest and policy makers, administrators, conservationists and researchers play in a tiny theatre of operation, helped along and orchestrated by risk-averse decision makers.

Unless reforms are made in conservation, as we did in education, healthcare and other areas in past decades, our wildlife will die a slow death, due not just to developmental pressures but to incompetence, greed and a lack of vision, fuelled by a pseudo nationalism; but then again, is that not what happened in the case of our economic well-being as well? Private sector, both individual and institutional, must be given greater opportunity to legally and constitutionally engage in conservation in Sri Lanka. The WNPS in its own way has been pushing this agenda through the establishment of PLANT, through research in elephant and leopard areas, by providing insurance and training to wildlife department staff and more. But each of these are uphill battles and minor initiatives in comparison to what could be the true potential of a well facilitated private sector engagement where these parties are seen and valued as true partners on the conservation journey. We are weak nationally and have bled too much to not seek added help. Let it not be considered after environmental bankruptcy but rather as an essential measure to prevent that destiny. Like any nation in our situation, we will need resources and more money to pull things out of decline. But if conservation policies are well thought out and responsibly managed, there is no reason to fear either development or private sector engagement. Science, knowledge, a value for youth and good skills and talent, and the wellbeing of our species need to hold sway, rather than nationalistic sentiments, political slogans and archaic laws driven by bureaucrats. Are we up to the task as a nation to take control of our destiny?

 

The writer is the Editor, Loris, Journal of the WNPS, Past President, WNPS and Chair, WNPS PLANT