“Sri Lanka has lot to offer the world”: Conservation scientist Dr. M. Sanjayan

Conservation International CEO and USA TIME100 Climate Leader 

Dr. M. Sanjayan

Academics Group Founder and CEO Kandeban Balendran (left) and Conservation International CEO and USA TIME100 Climate Leader Dr. M. Sanjayan

By Shanika Sriyananda

A Sri Lankan born world famous conservation scientist and the Conservation International’s Chief Executive Officer Dr. M. Sanjayan said Sri Lanka had a lot to offer as it was a unique place on earth with amazing natural resources.

He said that if he was to tell about Sri Lanka for his five-year-old daughter he would tell her stories from his childhood where a monkey had stolen his birthday cake, his first time fishing experience, love for animals and the elephants seen behind his house but for the world he would tell Sri Lanka’s story as a country that had a huge potential to offer to the world.

“Sri Lanka is an incredible country with over 400 species of birds, mega diversity of reptiles and amphibians, a big population of elephants, leopards, bears, etc. It is amazing to have all these in a small place on earth,” Dr. Sanjayan, who was named as TIME100 Climate Leader, said.

Create the future

Speaking at an event called ‘Create the Future – Conversation on climate and nature’, he said that even though there was a human-elephant conflict, people still have had tolerance to elephants that they were living with.

“Sri Lanka has highly educated people, some manufacturing bases, ports and lots of natural resources. I do not see a reason why this country should not go hand in hand with development and conservation,” he further said.

The event was organised by Academics Group, co-hosted by JKH Group, Cinnamon Life, City of Dreams Sri Lanka and the print media partner was Daily FT. 

Following are the excerpts of his speech and the panel discussion moderated by the founder and CEO of Academics Group Kandeban Balendran, who recently received the prestigious Outstanding Volunteer Leadership Award from Harvard University. 

I was born and raised in Sri Lanka until my parents left for West Africa when I was five years old.

I recall how my grandmother didn’t want me to go to sea because she believed in astrology and worried that I would die by drowning. I was not permitted to go to sea to learn swimming until my mother, who was not a good swimmer, broke all traditions to teach me swimming in a dynamite pit, which was muddied with frogs and leaves, in Sierra Leone in West Africa, when I was nine years old.

It opened up a world to me and was gone diving in every ocean from the Arctic to Sri Lanka to Indonesia.

Love for nature

When I was doing my research for the PhD in farms in California, every farm that I went to for my study the farmers had the same kind of love and appreciation for their lands while I was talking about my love for wildlife, flowers, streams, etc. They spoke about how valuable their lands were for them as farmers, how they worried about the soil that was drying up, agricultural pests or would the farms survive for long enough to pass it down to the next generation as their kids were leaving the farming business and moving elsewhere.

But, I was speaking the language of love. I love this place, the people and the beauty of nature. This was the lesson, which I learnt very early in my career.

Then I realised that it was a big challenge for those who love nature. We tend to talk about love and how much we appreciate nature but the love for a lot of people around the world is not just about love, it is really about values. The work and project that we do at the Conservation International are based on this idea. We are not just trying to convince people to love nature more at the end of the day for people around the world, love alone is not going to be enough and we need to find a way for nature to create values because without that it won’t last.

The forests in Brazil have been deforested over the last 50 years. Amazon is reaching the tipping point. If more than 80% of forests in Amazon are destroyed, there will be a fundamental shift of the weather patterns and there will be a cascading effect. Once rain gets interrupted, the entire rainforest will convert into a different kind of habitat with much drier environment leading to massive consequences for the entire South America and the world because Amazon is one of the biggest rain generated huge forest that puts out massive amount of moisture to the atmosphere, which will come back down as rain.

Lots of forests in the Amazon were previously deforested. The farmers who grew up there did commercial farming, where they cut forests, burnt them and planted African grass species, in which invasive species grow quickly. They put cattle for gazing but these lasted only for a few seasons because soil was not productive to maintain for long years. After a few years, land productivity dropped and cattle were barely hanging on. No farmer could make money and this is a very common phenomenon in the edges of the Amazon.

Collaborations

There we have a collaboration with the BTG Pactual Investment Bank, which is the largest investment bank in Brazil and Latin America. They venture out to degraded land, which were cleared and used for cattle, to buy them for cheap rates and do reforestation in those lands where half of the restored land goes for timber productions. They grow plant species which grow soon to get timber for making furniture. The other half of the forest has been restored for native forests. Invested in billions of dollars, their target is to restore 250,000 hectares.

The BDG Pactual is promising its investors a market return, which was said to be 11 to 14%, which is a high rate of return for that kind of product. How are they giving them that return that they will get half from the time in which they do a business and then also from restoring land as native forest, from which they are securing carbon that has a value although it has a low rate now.

If I found a land in the Sinharaja forest and want to restore it into a native forest and if I seek money from people or companies for charity, that project will never stay on. Once you contacted an investment potential, possibly then the scaling is much higher. That is what BDG Pactual is doing, where they raise billions of dollars and half of the money is going to native forest restoration, which is nearly $ 5 million. This is an attractive project as restoring a native forest without a single fund raising.

The project called Mountains to Mangroves in Bhutan which goes through the mountains and watersheds of Bhutan, Nepal, Bangladesh and parts of northeast India, is targeted to restore one million hectares of forest land by 2030. This is one of the largest reforestation and conservation projects in the history of South Asia.

In this project a group of NGOs working in Bhutan, India and Bangladesh is working together with the support of the Conservation International to get crowdfunding for restoration.

People around the world now have started to understand the value in nature. It is an investable product and if you can plan that investment with the private and corporate sector, then it will be a blended product that can stand market fluctuations.

For me, for over 20 years I have stepped into conservation because I love nature and I wanted to protect it to convince people to love nature like me but many people are not doing this.

Convince people to conserve nature

The famous Ethologist and conservationist Jane Goodall was in Sri Lanka for the first time and spent three days when the ‘Monkey Kingdom’ documentary was filming here. She is good at convincing people to love nature but she cannot do it for enough people.

If you really want to do something, then you really think about how to get lots of people, Governments and business entities to participate in it. In that sense Sri Lanka has lots of potential geographically, its human capital, highly educated population, biodiversity and many companies which are interested in this space.

Challenges to do it are big enough with enough certainly and then it can be attractive for investments or companies to raise multilateral types of financing. That is something that I have really seen here and to me it is the big step that needs to happen.

There are groups working on amazing projects here but the ability to scale it or attract a large amount of funding is still on the horizon.

In my childhood story about my grandmother and mother, my grandmother knew her time with her grandson was limited so she protected me at any cost. But my mother invested in me and knew I would pay off at some point. For her it was not just the love but investing values for her child’s future.

We are in the same moment with nature now. If you assume that this is the last moment of nature, you want to protect it and keep out the people.

Always be defensive and never be offensive. If you go offensive then you have to invest in it. If you cannot do it then you pay back in time.

Any company there today will not be there in 100 years. But one thing will be there in 100 years from now will be nature, which would be more valuable tomorrow than today. 

That is the only asset that lasts and the world is now realising the truth and has financial backing for the benefit of nature.    

Blue carbon projects

There are novel initiatives like blue carbon projects and Sri Lanka needs to be active, try and learn from those projects to do better.

I always tell my colleges in conservation that they are not afraid or overly worried about these new initiatives as they can be learnt soon.

But you need to be really trying and experimenting because when you figure it out you will do it much quicker and collaborate with others and form together to learn about them. There are lots of resources available today to help you understand better. Start designing and do not be afraid whether you will get perfectly right or wrong.

None of these projects are that difficult to do. We are talking about blue carbon projects in Bolivia, Kenya and Colombia, which are the best projects. If they are doing these projects Sri Lanka also can do.

For Sri Lanka, there are a couple of things to do to have good carbon projects. The Government needs to have rational rules.

In Kenya there is a good carbon project, which was started last year. Sri Lanka can take this as a model and modify it and apply it to Sri Lanka’s situation. There the Government takes about 40% and the rest of the money goes to communities. These carbon projects are funded by Apple, Gucci and Tiffneys and some of the top brands in the world. Most of the money from the project done by Apple goes to indigenous communities for the protection of a national park.

I would suggest Sri Lanka to get similar projects, modified and passed by the Government, which will have rational rules for carbon trading. I promise you that there will be a market for it tomorrow. 

Colombia is also doing well in carbon projects. The Colombian Minister of Environment is my friend and I can bring him to Sri Lanka for a dialogue with the Government and civil societies to show how they are doing blue carbon projects. It is the first country which put blue carbon to the market. They would store it to protect mangroves. Blue carbon is carbon underwater. Mangroves can store a lot of carbon and Sri Lanka can do it as it has many mangrove sites. Sri Lanka can learn from their projects on how to do such projects and their benefits by sharing lessons from them.

But the Government should not over reach thinking all carbon belongs to the Government. Then there will be no private sector market place coming in.

Conservation 

– a growing field

My advice for youth who have enthusiasm in nature conservation is that it is a growing field. When I got into this field, it was a pure hobby. My parents told me it was only for white people. It took many years for my family to realise that there is a real career.

Today, it is very different and all prominent companies are quite strong in corporate social responsibility and engage in conservation. As youth you are going into a growing field.

I did not have a plan to adapt to this field and never thought about becoming a CEO of a big international organisation. I did something which I really felt and was passionate about. What I tell students is really be honest to yourself about what you are good at and not and do what you are actually good at to pursue it hard. It doesn’t need biology or environmental classes to engage in conservation efforts.

Ocean around Sri Lanka

Marine resources around Sri Lanka might have great potential. Sri Lanka has been placed in a very unique location and can contribute globally.

The Peace Park called Tasitolu in Timor-Leste, for example, is a protected coastal area between Indonesia and Timor-Leste. It is a collaborative project after ending the conflict between two countries. 

Similarly, Sri Lanka has real opportunities to create a large marine protected area and think of fishing revenues going to conservation. 

A large marine protected area will be a breeding ground for fish and you can catch more fish around it. Then you can charge a premium for a ship for fishing in that halo and that extra premium can be added to the marine protected area. Sri Lanka has a lot of opportunities for marine resources.

Private sector does not take risks but moves fast and brings capital. The Government has to bring in rationalised rules to find more money. We find great partnerships with the private sector. The only challenge the private sector has is to be competitive in ideas. They need to willingly step up there, ideally collaborating with others.

 - Pix by Sameera Wijesinghe