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Hamilton Dutch Canal back in the limelight

by Florence Wickramage

Ancient Ceylon witnessed the emergence of a network of canals as managed water systems for irrigation . But it was during the Dutch period that canals assumed an additional important role as economical transportation avenues.

The Dutch ruled Ceylon for 150 years from 1656. It was during this period that the 85 mile long Hamilton-Dutch Canal was used for the transportation of Copra, Coconut and other saleable commodities by rafts from Puttalam to Colombo.

Origin

It was in the year 1726 that the Dutch Engineer Hamilton constructed this canal connecting it to the Kelani River which fell into the sea from Colombo. The Canal wound its way through Pamunugama, Dandugam Oya, Negombo Lagoon, Maha Oya, Gin Oya, Ratmal Oya, Koswatu Oya, Yatakalan Oya, Lunu Oya, the Chilaw Lagoon on to the Puttalam Lagoon.

Trade

Puttlam and Chilaw are two vital districts forming the Coconut Triangle with Kurunegala. Since the canal wound its way through Chilaw to Puttlam, large quantities of coconut and copra were transported via rafts to Colombo. This mode of transportation was a contributor to successful trade practices of ancient Ceylon. Colombo was the centre of trading activities. Therefore export items such as coconut and copra thus transported thereafter found easy access to export markets. The economic standards of owners of boats and rafts benefitted immensely apart from tradesmen because of the canal.

Neglect

The Dutch Hamilton Canal became neglected over the years and with the increase of road networks and vehicles lost its importance as a convenient mode of transportation. In ancient Ceylon people travelled by boat through the canal and even foreigners who were in the island preferred a boat ride to view and enjoy the beauties of nature.

However the canal continued to function as a source of livelihood for small-scale fishermen who lived on land bordering it. The villagers used the canal water for personal use such as washing and bathing Apart from such uses, the Canal was a managed water resource for cultivations which included paddy. During recent times, business establishments situated in the region began to divert their toxic waste into the canal and several places along the canal became garbage dumping grounds.

This resulted in environmental pollution which destroyed the canal as a water resource for villagers. Marine life got affected including the destruction of unique marine vegetation. Destructive species of water plants such as Water hyacinth and salvinia covered the waters and the canal became an eye sore. Polluted canals with stagnant water posed health problems and the spread of diseases such as diarrhoea and dysentery were on the increase.

Development

Two kilometres of the Hamilton Dutch Canal has now been rehabilitated as a flood relief measure by the Coastal Resources Management Project of the Coast Conservation Department.

Mr. Anil Premaratne, Project Director of the Coastal Resources Management Project said part of the Dutch Hamilton canals which leads to the Negombo Lagoon is being rehabilitated simultaneously with the Departments Negombo Lagoon Rehabilitation programme.

He explained that the network of canals in the country come under the jurisdiction of different State Institutions, Provincial Councils and the Land Reclamation Board which is in charge of low lying areas.

The Coast Conservation Department has already allocated funds to several Provincial Councils to carry on rehabilitation work on canal waterways which come under their purview. Mr. Premaratne emphasised that the cleaning up and rehabilitation of canals have to ensure that there is an uninterrupted proper flow of water from the canals to the waterways they are connected to i.e. lagoon, sea etc.

Nature

Environmentalists foresee a properly managed network of canals as a contributor to nature and as an avenue where nature lovers could enjoy comfortable boat rides to various destinations. The Muthurajawela Visitor Centre organises boat rides through the canal to mangroves and for bird watching. Biodiversity is rich around virgin area through which canals flow and such areas provide ample scope for research.

Tropical food grown in ... England

Growing sweet potatoes on a commercial basis in the United Kingdom is nearing reality. Trials by a grower on a farm in Lincolnshire, eastern England, have shown that if plants are given some early protection, good yields can be obtained.

In this project, about 10 kilograms from each plant was achieved and follows cooperation between Horticulture Research International (HRI) of Warwickshire, English Midlands, and the grower.

Brian Smith - a vegetable specialist, plant breeder and head of the Novel Crops Group at HRI - is pictured preparing cuttings of sweet potato from a storage root grown in an HRI test-bed as a progenitor for a new crop. In HRI's atmosphere-controlled greenhouses, different varieties of sweet potato are grown for research from which those yielding the heaviest crop can be determined.

Sweet potatoes are ancient tropical plants, members of the Convolvulacae family and used as food for humans and cattle. The original sweet potato plants for the Lincolnshire experiment were supplied by Robin Wood, site manager at HRI-Kirton, who noted that with yields such as those achieved during the test, it showed that the crop has a worthy commercial potential in the UK.

Brian Smith supported that view and said that the results were very encouraging, particularly, because the weather in the UK since January 2001 has not been ideal for the plants.

It has been proved that the sweet potato variety Red Skin can be planted under unheated glass in early June and harvested in October.

There are also many more varieties with characteristics better suited to UK weather conditions, such as Tainung 65, Beauregard, Excel, Centennial, Regal, Georgia Tet, and Sumor.

Achieving farm diversity in East Anglia, eastern England, with new crops is consistent with the function and aims of HRI's Novel Crops Group which offers assistance to customers in identifying, sourcing, improving, developing and commercialising such crops in the UK. Retailers are continually looking for such lines in order to offer consumers different foods.

Brian Smith leads an allium genetics group which developed the world's first hybrid leeks that have come to dominate production across European countries in the last few years. For this, he worked with the seed industry and his research on onions is very closely allied to the sweet potato and the needs of the producer.

HRI has five years of experience in growing sweet potatoes and, encouraged by the research, its Novel Crops Group is planning to exploit the crop's commercial potential further.

Stop littering, the best solution

I have read two articles calling for a ban of plastic bags in S Lanka but I did not read any article showing why this should be a bad decision.

In these two articles there are baseless assertions, particularly regarding so called chemical traces and pollution created when burnt.

Virgin resins used for the production of plastic bags are suitable for food contact; this cannot be discussed.

Why polythene plastic bags are still the best packaging product

* polythene and other plastic resins are a buy product of refining.

* polythene is not biodegradable. So food packing is very safe.

* its energetic balance is the best compared to other material, especially paper and carton.

* it can be recycled in various ways: energetic recycling, production of recycled bags...

* there is no good alternative right now.

Paper has a very bad energetic balance, very often its production is highly polluting. Furthermore you cannot use paper for food wrapping.

* in summery polythene is the most hygienic packing product. Studies have shown a clear link between the development of packaging and the development of a country.

Using inappropriate packagings, or not using packagings, lead to a high wastage in the agricultural area for example.

It has been proved that without good packagings 40% of the vegetables harvested in a country can be lost. In developped countries, the "ban" of plastic bags is almost no more an issue.

Handicap of polythene: it is not biodegradable. Actually it's main quality is also it's main handicap. If littered, or dumped, polythene will remain as it is during a very long time (researchs show that this must be balanced because biodagradable products too will not start their degradation process if dumped in bad conditions). Researchs have been done to find degradable plastics and biodegradable plastics. Some are already in use. But for food contact it is impossible to use them. One cannot control the start of biodegradation. One must also understand that the trend in consumption is to go to more and more small packagings; actually there are more and more plastic packagings - because no credible alternative....

Local Authorities must take three type of decisions: a) organize the collection of garbage. In more and more european countries citizens must sort out their garbage themselves and drop the glass bottles in containers, the plastic products in special bins, the food garbage in other special bins... b) organize the treatment of garbage and especially the recycling. c) launch campaigns banning littering and dumping. Those who litter should be fined. d) encourage citizens to use plastic bins - more hygienic because easy to clean wash!

In brief, advise citizens to stop littering.

This is the best solution now. Imagine how various diseases can spread through littering, dumping, spitting... Imagine Sri Lanka without garbage everywhere, without people spitting everywhere. Don't you think it would be better?

- Yves Perronault

'The damn water is ours!'

by Marcela Lopez Levy

Through the chaos of tear-gas, smoke and flying police truncheons, Marcelo Rojas saw the Bolivian flag carried at the front of the march waver and fall.

'I saw how (the carrier) was beaten down by the police and couldn't bear to see the flag fall, so I dived in there. I had to wrest it away from the police, and they hit me. I managed to escape even though I couldn't breathe from the tear-gas, and I suddenly realised all my friends were gone. But I had the flag, and from that moment on I wouldn't let go of it.'

He was to hang on to that flag for the days of street battles to come, acquiring the nickname Banderas ('Flags') as he became the standard-bearer of Bolivia's water wars. In April 2000 Rojas, a young man of 22, had gone with some friends to join a rally to protest against water privatisation in his city, Cochabamba.

The year before, the World Bank had pressurised the Bolivian Government into privatising water companies. It refused credit to the public company which ran the water services, recommended 'no public subsidies' to cushion against price hikes, and insisted on giving a monopoly to Aguas del Tunari, part of the British company International Water Ltd, in turn owned by the US engineering giant Bechtel.

The new owners, who had been granted a 40-year concession, announced price hikes before they even began operations; in a region where the minimum wage is under $100 per month, people faced increases of $20 per month and more.

Peasants now had to buy permits to collect rainwater from their own wells and roof tanks.

Many people could only get water for two hours a day. All autonomous water systems had to be handed over without compensation.

In response thousands joined the mobilisations; old and young, seasoned activists and those usually too busy surviving to get politically involved.

'I had never taken any interest in politics before,' Marcelo says. 'My father is a politician, and I thought it was all about cutting deals.

But to see people fighting for their water, their rights, made me realise there was a common good to defend, that the country can't be left in the hands of the politicians. Carrying the flag, I became a symbol, someone to follow, even though I was not a leader; there were 200 young people who fought alongside me who wouldn't let me go home. I couldn't let them down.'

Instead, he had to choose between his loyalty to his new comrades and his family. 'I rang my mother to tell her I was OK and she said if I didn't come home there and then, I shouldn't bother to go back to all. She was so upset, but I had to stay."

There was a price to pay for his visibility; he was arrested and tortured by the police after the end of the protests. 'Now I realise that we have to struggle to make our country better.'

He was one of hundreds of young people who became known as the 'water warriors'. At the front of every subsequent march they built barricades to ensure protest was not extinguished. They chased the police back into their barracks and at one point re-took the main city square after the armed forces occupied it.

Many of them come from comfortable backgrounds, attend university, have jobs, however precarious. At the barricades, they met people from all walks of life. As Juan Gomez, a 17-year-old, told me:

'We shared the barricades with street children, with poor kids and old people who have nowhere to go; all these things make you think.' These experiences changed and radicalised a new generation in Cochabamba.

Herbert Letelier, another 'water warrior', explained: 'We've ben fighting against the system, not just against Aguas del Tunari; the poverty, the lack of work, the rising cost of living, then the water-traiff hikes..... I have been made aware of the social differences between people in Bolivia, the gap between rich and poor.'

Their confrontation with the system has taught them to be wary of power and of blandishments. They resisted offers from political parties which arrived bearing gifts of money; they won the respect of their elders; they faced a military ready to wound and kill; they listened to the political activists who tried to incorporate them in their struggles, the church, the revolutionary parties; they dealt with the undercover intelligence officers who tried to deflect their aim. They listened to all and learnt from them, going along with none.

As Marcelo Rojas put it: 'You have to act with the heart, but you always have to think first.'

Many of them look back on their experience in the thick of battle at the barricades as the moment they're most inspired by, where they learnt to share, to protect the weak and to stand up and be counted.

Oscar Olivera, a factory labourer and the main spokesperson for the protests, gave thanks publicly to these young women and men, 'without whom the people of Cochabamba could not have stood up for their rights.'

Olivera was a prominent member of the Coodinadora - Coordination for the Defence of Water and Life - a unique coalition of labour activists, rural organisations, the coca growers of nearby Chapare, politicians, non-governmental organisations, local professionals and young people.

The Coordinadora organised the first protest in December 1999, when 20,000 people occupied the central plaza. The Government used tear-gas against them for the first time in 18 years.

For two months no one paid their water bills. When negotiations broke down, the Coordinadora called for a symbolic seizure of the central square, the plaza. This time, 30,000 turned up. Police fired on the crowd; 175 people were injured and two youths were blinded.

President Banzer declared martial law on 8 April 2000, imposed a state of siege and sent in crack military units.

The TV cameras focused on a man on bent knee, rifle pointed, eye in the sights, in civilian clothes.

He was army captain Iriarte La Fuente, shooting into the Cochabamba demonstrators. Jorge Crespo, a 17-year-old boy, was killed; many more were injured.

After the kid died and the others got shot, people were incensed. There were more than 80,000 in the streets. The official line was that the protesters were drug traffickers. Indignant old ladies blockading the streets said: 'What, us, drug dealers?'

The Water Privatising Company cleared out its desks, its computers, its files, and made a rapid exit from the country. La Coordinadora talked with a government delegation and they agreed that the water contract should be broken. 'Now that the water is controlled by the people,' says Olivera, 'the water is sweet'.

- Third World Network Features.

EU committed to reduce pollution, pumping vast subsidies into fossil fuels

BRUSSELS, (Reuters) The European Union is committed to reducing the pollution blamed for causing global warming, so why is it pumping vast subsidies into fossil fuels such as coal and diesel which are the main sources of greenhouse gases?

Environmental campaigners are fuming at a deal among EU member states last week which ensured Germany will be able to continue its multi-billion euro annual handouts to coal mining, in return for allowing other countries to subsidise truck fuel.

"This shows the imbalance between government rhetoric on making a great leap forward in the environment and the reality," said Rob Bradley of Climate Network Europe, a group campaigning for policies to halt global warming.

France, Italy and the Netherlands gave tax breaks to hauliers in response to truckers' protests at soaring fuel prices in 2000 when oil was trading at around $30 a barrel - subsidies the European Commission said were illegal. The Commission, the EU's executive arm, has told Germany to phase out its coal aid completely by 2010 because such subsidies distort the bloc's single market.

Member states banded together to override the Commission's misgivings in a trade-off which satisfied a range of their own national interests but left a major question mark over the bloc's environmental priorities. Under the United Nations Kyoto treaty on climate change, the EU must cut its greenhouse gas emissions by eight percent of 1990 levels by the end of the decade. Most of those emissions come from burning fossil fuels for energy and transport. Germany insists its coal aid - which peaked at 11.3 billion marks (5.78 billion euros) in 1989 and is 5.7 billion marks this year - protects jobs and secures a key energy source, even though emissions from coal are far higher than from oil or gas.

"World oil and gas resources are expected to last for another 30-50 and 60-100 years respectively, while coal will be there for several hundred years," said Franzjosef Schafhausen, head of the German government's Federal Climate Working Group.

"If you mine less coal in favour of gas and oil, you will find prices for those fuels increasing on the world market. We need to ensure security of energy supply." But the European Environmental Bureau (EEB), a coalition of environmental campaign groups, decried the coal-diesel bargain. "We really regret that governments do such deals," said Sylvain Chevassus, the EEB's tax campaigner.

"A lot of funds are being wasted on subsidies that are harmful to the environment. The money could be used in a more efficient and coherent way." The EEB wants all environmentally harmful subsidies to industry, transport and agriculture phased out by 2005 and the money used for cleaner energy such as wind and solar, and social restructuring in rust belt areas. A report by pressure group Greenpeace last year found that developed countries spend 10 times as much subsidising fossil and nuclear fuels as on renewables.

As well as cutting fossil fuel subsidies, the EEB wants governments to increase tax on non-renewable fuels and ease the blow on industry by reducing taxes on employment. "Increasing environmental taxes and decreasing labour taxes - even the unions agree with that," Chevassus said.

Plans for an EU-wide strategy on energy tax have been drawn up and shot down over the last 10 years as certain member states hang on to their sovereign rights on fiscal policy.

But at a summit in Barcelona in March, EU leaders said they wanted to adopt a Commission proposal on minimum tax levels for energy, as a counterweight to the liberalisation of gas and electricity markets, meant to bring down prices. EU finance ministers are to discuss the proposal on Tuesday.

The Commission plan, dating from 1997, is to gradually raise EU-wide minimum tax levels on oil products, and introduce EU minima for the first time on coal, gas and electricity.

Initially, Spain strongly opposed the move, but it relented when Germany and France agreed in Barcelona to push ahead with energy liberalisation which Madrid wanted. All member states have the right to veto tax proposals.

As holder of the EU's rotating presidency, Spain wants to make progress. But disagreements over issues such as tax rebates for energy-intensive industries, private homes and certain types of transport remain to be resolved.

"The differences have never been so huge between member states," one diplomat told Reuters, saying he expected no major progress during Spain's presidency, which ends on June 30.

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