Environmental management, protection main responsibilities:

Cleaner environment for development - CEA Chairman

Dinesh DE ALWIS

In an interview with the Daily News Central Environmental Authority (CEA) Chairman Charitha Herath revealed some of his solutions for the conservation of the environment in Sri Lanka

Following are excerpts

Q:The Central Environment Authority plays a vital role in environment conservation. What are its major functions?

Central Environmental Authority Chairman Charitha Herath

A:The Central Environmental Authority was established in August 1981 under the provision of the National Environmental Act Throughout last 30 years the CEA has done a great service for the country’s development. In Sri Lanka responsibility for Environmental Management and protection rests on The Central Environmental Authority under the National Environmental Act.

The CEA has the overall responsibility in Environmental Management and protection with the objective of integrating environmental considerations in the development process of the country. Industrialization is booming in the country and the CEA has a big role to play. Hence the CEA has given five main areas to deal with.

The first one is Environmental Assessment and Management Division and it mainly does the Environmental Impact Assessments (EIA). If you do any major project in Sri Lanka like roads, ports, highways and dams, you need to get EIA for that, which will be providing by CEA.

Secondly Environmental Pollution Control division (EPC), this is another important part of the environmental management. There are many ways of pollution ways. Air pollution, water pollution and visual pollution can be seen widely in Sri Lanka.

There are the Natural Resource Management Division and Environmental Education and Awareness Divisions.

Q:What is visual pollution and why it is important to us?

A:The visual pollution can be anything that is unattractive. They can be made elements like structures, communication towers, advertising billboards, power lines, garbage, posters or any other thing that a person does not feel comfortable to look at.

Visual pollution is prevalent in Sri Lanka. There are no regulations imposed to protect visual beauty.

The visual environment is public property but some people market this space by fixing billboards, hoardings and cut outs without consideration.

From this year CEA has planned to impose special regulations regarding visual pollution in Sri Lanka. The new regulations will protect the visual beauty of Sri Lanka.

According to the Environmental Act the CEA has the rights to impose such a regulation. We observe towers, billboards and hoardings being erected on mountain and hilltops. This has now become a social problem. Visual pollution is a very important area and we should protect this country’s natural beauty by imposing new regulations.

Q:You mentioned about Natural Resource Management, what is the important of that division?

A:Natural Resource Management (NRM) is another vital service done by CEA. There what we do is protecting environmentally important areas. All natural resources like mountains, rivers and tanks are related to different agencies.

Like forest related for Forest Department, tanks are related to the Irrigation Department, but still we have the responsibility to look in to it.

Central Environmental Authority Chairman Charitha Herath

Under this section we are protecting environmentally important areas.

The CEA has declared nine places in this country as environmentally protected areas. The CEA has declared Knuckles, Hantana, Bolgoda Lake, Muthurajawela, Thalangama North tank, Gregory’s Lake, Wathurana wetland and Maragala Mountain as imported areas. People can’t do any business activities in those areas.

Under this Act we have the power to declare any given place as environmentally important areas, either it is belonging to government or estate or private. We can declare as environmentally protected area. If you develop any new site in that area, you have to get the approval from us. Industries which people can do are listed in the Act. You can’t do those land filling.

The CEA does have another area. That is the Wetland Management Division where we focus to manage the wetlands in the country. In future the CEA will pay money to the people who are protecting the wetland. If you are protecting the wetland, that means you are protecting our environment. So the Wetlands need to be protected.

Q:We can get the support of schoolchildren to protect the environment. How will the CEA get about this?

A:Yes we have done it. There is a section called the Environmental Education and Awareness Division. This division is important with regard to environmental management and protection. If you look at the whole Asian region, Sri Lanka has done much better, with more advanced knowledge on the environment. That is not because of anything else but because of the CEA education awareness programs. We have conducted many programs over the last 30 years to educate the people.

Under that division, we worked with students through Eco-Clubs. There are 6,000 Eco-Clubs throughout the country. We have nearly 200,000 students involved with these Clubs. We are still promoting that activity. We are trying to get the support of more students in the future.

Q: What is E-waste management program?

A: There is an argument that pollution and waste are similar. That is not true. Pollution is one thing, waste is another thing. Actually pollution is a by-product of some thing. Waste is something that we produce. The E-waste management program was launched by the CEA with 14 other leading companies involved in selling and assembling of electronic and electrical equipment in Sri Lanka.

With the launching of this program, E-waste will be collected islandwide by relevant private companies.

Q: How is the progress of the Pilisaru program?

A:The Pilisaru project is a Municipal waste management project designed by the CEA with the help of Environmental Ministry. We were given three years and allocated Rs 5.6 billion for this project.

We are now completing the first three years. Government is satisfied with our work and extended the program for another three years. We provided them with financial assistance, technology and knowledge.

At the moment we are engaging with 65 local authorities. We are going to speed up the program and get all Pradeshiya Sabhas and Provincial Councils join the program. So it is going to be a challenge this year.

Q: What can you say about the human-elephant conflict?

A: The conflict is emerging due to urbanization and industrialization. People use the jungle for their needs, especially elephant corridors. We as the CEA are not going to play a bigger role, but just making people aware of this.

Q: In 2011, what type of new projects will the CEA be launching?

A: We are going to do some work on water resources. In Sri Lanka the rivers do not belong to any given government authority. You would wonder about this. Rivers are categorized and classified as sections.

The Ground water issue is also another big problem. Ground water is a resource like oil.

Some countries don’t even have water at all to drink. We are now selling those resources without measuring or dealing with it any sophisticated way. We would like to do a research and develop a Water Map soon.

The CEA hopes to introduce new regulations for sound pollution and visual pollution. I have a dream to develop a Centre for Environmental Research and Training.

Clinical waste is another type of waste. This is a very important subject which haven’t touched on as yet. We however, plan to launch a program this year.

We are going to work with the Health and Environment Ministries. We hope to launch a program to get cluster wise incinerators, which can be used to burn these hazardous waste.

Hazardous waste means clinical waste. You can’t make use of this waste for any other recycle matters. Like injections, body parts etc. These are the things that are generated in hospitals. We need to overcome this situation.

We will deal with private sector institutes and organizations to develop a cluster base incineration. Using these incinerators we are going to help hospitals to burn their clinical waste.

Sri Lanka is a developing country. The two concepts of environment and development are always contradictory. How does the CEA balance these two concepts?

It is a very important and timely question. Our idea is to develop everything together, environment protection plus development. Then the countries value goes up.

There are some highly developed countries but no place to live, no people, no visitors and no tourists. Environment plus Development could be achieved. It is not an unachievable target.

We think the CEA would be able to make the country’s development a success by providing a better environment.