Colombo announces new highways, environmentalists denounce deforestation

Sri Lanka ranks 4th globally for destruction of primary forests. According to environmentalists, as many as 39 national parks will be affected. Infrastructure will also run through the Kelani, Kalu, Bentara and Nilwala river valleys, areas where farmers are already coping with the effects of climate change.

Colombo (Asia News) - In late June, President Ranil Wickremesinghe unveiled updates to the "National Physical Planning 2048." Launched in 2011, it will mark a significant step in the country's urban and land development, according to the Colombo government.

Minister of Urban Development and Housing Prasanna Ranatunga said that the relationship between cities and the countryside and the protection of the natural landscape were taken into account during the planning stage.

The preparation of the "National Physical Planning 2048" has been conducted by the National Physical Planning Department, which will also be the guarantor of monitoring the implementation of the works.

Ravindra Kariyawasam, environmentalist and national coordinator of the Center for Environment and Nature Studies, is of a different opinion, with respect to the impact of the works that will be carried out and fears large-scale environmental destruction of the country and increased land consumption.

This - he argues - is already be taking place in Sri Lanka "at least since the inception of National Physical Planning in 2011. The government is hiding what has been done and grinding environmental destruction everywhere, concealing the true interests of the project."

According to a report by the Center for Environment and Nature Studies, about more than 28 hectares (64 acres) of forests are destroyed in Sri Lanka every day. "This will also soon lead to the privatization of Sri Lanka's water," Ravindra explains.

The Study Center presented the results of its monitoring at Boralle's N. M. Perera Institute in Colombo, where environmentalist Kariyamaditte Gnanarama Thero said, "In the government's plan is the development of a new highway network throughout the country, which is to be added to the existing one. Many forests will disappear.

As many as 39 national parks will be affected. Not to mention that the drastic decline in the percentage of forests reopening, will increase the impact of extreme phenomena - such as floods and droughts -, consequences of climate change."

The road networks, in the "National Physical Planning 2048" project, will also pass through the valleys of the Kelani, Kalu, Bentara and Nilwala rivers, areas where residents are facing several floods and farmers have had to abandon their fields due to the force of increasingly heavy rains.

"The main reason for these hydrogeological disruptions is precisely construction of the Sinharajaya Kudava Road, and the Sinharajaya Deniya Lankagama Road, which are reducing significant shares of forests day by day. An environmental bombshell authorized by the National Physical Plan," Ravindra Kariawasam concludes.

According to the survey conducted by Global Forest Torch, Food and Agriculture Organization and Goutham Burg University, Sri Lanka is currently ranked 4th in the world for destruction of primary forests, that is, those intact forests whose ecosystem subsists in its original state because it has never been touched by industrial human activities or agriculture.

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