Review of Policies Related to Land Degradation in Sri Lanka

GAYATHRI S. ABHAYARATHNE

Land degradation is the lowering of productive capacity of land temporally or permanently. It can occur by natural phenomena as well as human interventions. Although there are several causes for land degradation, the soil erosion appears to be the major reason for land degradation in Sri Lanka.

According to the UN Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD), there are no any desert areas defined in Sri Lanka. But several parts of the country experience serious droughts and land degradation. Hence, many laws, policies as well as programmes and projects have been formulated and they are under the implementation.

National Environmental policy, Draft National Land Use policy and National Watershed Management policy directly address the issue of land degradation. Under them, many strategies are formulated and they are under the progress. Although policies like National Environmental Action Plan, National Agricultural policy, National Action Plan for Disaster Management etc. directly doesn’t address the issue, they emphasize some strategies those need to avoid improper land management practices.

The projects implemented in order to combat land degradation have been very successful in Sri Lanka. Environmental Action 1 project, Land Titling and Related Services projects, Coastal Zone management project are some of the projects those have brought favourable results to combat land degradation.

Despite the many policies and projects to prevent land degradation are available in Sri Lanka, agriculture lands are being increasingly degraded. Absence of formalized coordination mechanism between national level agencies and the provincial and local level organizations, absence of a National Land Use policy, absence of a single specific body to combat land degradation in the country and delay in the implementation of approved policies are some of the major reasons for the policy and project failures. Hence what can be concluded is that policies alone can not resolve the problems. It is important that all parties concerned are educated and awareness created, so they can effectively contribute to this issue.

Ultimately, it is very important to evaluate all sectoral policies to identify gaps that have a negative impact on integrate land resources. Rapid implementations of the formulated policies are also necessary. Developing an appropriate legal framework to deal with land related issues in a comprehensive manner and developing a mechanism for exchanging data between different agencies and make the information available to all relevant institutions are also very important. If those recommendations are successfully implemented, policies as well as projects can bring out successful results to combat land degradation in Sri Lanka.