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| Friday, 27 September 2002 |
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by Florence Wickramage The Cabinet has appointed a six-member Task Force on Environment on Environment and Natural Resources Minister Rukman Senanayake's recommendations to report on the Asian Brown Cloud and emerging environmental issues, Ministry Additional Secretary Sunil Sarath Perera told the Daily News yesterday. Senanayake, Chairman of the South Asian Cooperative Environment Programme, believes that prior to dealing with the Asian Brown Cloud issue, the seriousness of the problem should be assessed and identify regional and international initiatives necessary to deal with the situation. The Task Force has been given three months to submit their recommendations to the Cabinet. Dr. Ravi Perera, a professional environmental scientist who is also the Director of the Central Environment Authority heads the Task Force. Ministers of Science and Technology, Irrigation and Water Management, Fisheries and Ocean Resources and Agriculture will nominate experts from agencies under their ministries to serve in the Task Force. Senanayake told the Cabinet that a second regional environmental problem in the growing depletion of oxygen in the coastal waters of the India-Sri Lanka continental shelf is more serious than the Brown Cloud. The Minister has referred to a study done by the National Institute of Oceanography, New Delhi that there is a dramatic increase of algae in the coastal seas off India and Sri Lanka owing to increased run-off of fertiliser from rivers into the Indian Ocean. Senanayake said both these problems cannot be managed by Sri Lanka alone, since the country lacks technical capacity to deal with these issues independently. Since these issues affect India as well, it has been decided to facilitate bilateral information exchanges and linkages with the Indian institutions, he said. |
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