APRC and the Bio Regional Vision

8/7/2019 APRC and the Bio Regional Vision

1/5

APRC and the Bioregional vision

by C. Wijeyawickrema, LL.B., Ph.D.

"All human progress has depended on new questions rather than on new answers to the old questions."

Alfred North White, Science and the Modern World, 1925

Sri Lankas seven River Basin Units

Language-blind politics

The recent statement by the APRC Chairman, Minister Tissa Vitharana at his interview

with The Islandstaff writer C. A. Chandraprema, "In the APRC, we are trying to avoid

having territories carved out on the basis of race or a religion or any factors like

that[language?]" (The Island, 2/6/2009) is of historical significance. Empowerment of

people, rather than devolution of power to new sets of local politicians become a reality

by selecting spatial units which are language-blind. The political geographic importance of

it is further elevated by an equally important geo-

political statement made by the Indian foreign minister Pranab Mukherjee, "...Government of India has no instrumentality under which it can force a sovereign

government to take a particular action. This is not simply possible," (2/18/2009).

However, India expects Sri Lanka to accept what has failed in India for 50 years! India

wants a "credible" "devolution" solution in Sri Lanka, but does not speak of

"empowerment" of people. This is strange because, India did "devolution" (devolution of

power to state politicians not people) based on language in 1956, and it became an

unending saga of new demands for new states. Hardly a day passes without Indian

military facing separate state demands. Besides, the abject poverty of at least 300 million


2/5

Indians became an embarrassment to the ruling elites in Delhi as well as in the state

capitals. Therefore, as a remedial step India decided in 1993 to "empower" people at thePanchayathi Raj level by the 73 and 74 Constitutional Amendments.

In Sri Lanka race (Tamil, Sinhala or Muslim) or religion (Hindu, Buddhist, Islam or

Christian) was never a serious political-constitutional issue. Instead, it was always a

language issue since the 1920s. Therefore, one has to presume that the enlightenedapproach of minister Vitharana excludes race, religion as well as language. If territories

are not going to be carved out on the basis of race, religion or language, what should bethe most appropriate (scientific/legal?) and reasonable (just and fair?) basis for the

smallest spatial unit of citizen empowerment? This is the most important decision in anynew constitutional arrangement.

The term empowerment is used to distinguish it from "devolution of powers" because

devolution means simply sharing power with a new breed of political leaders. For

example, in India after the linguistic state boundary demarcation in 1956 or in Sri Lanka

with PC white elephants in 1987, the people (the citizen voter) were not endowed withany governmental power. Instead, a new crop of politicians appeared on the political

scene (nurseries for the kith and kin of established-seasoned politicians). Empowerment

on the other hand means, giving people governmental power at the lowest possiblespatial unit level. The American, Kirkpatrick Sale described this as "human scale" in his

book, Human Scale (1980). He says everything works best if it is at a scale (size)

manageable by local people. This is akin to what we generally identify as "grass-roots

"politics. In a global village one thinks globally, but acts locally. Or, as the former U.SHouse Speaker Tip ONeil once said "all politics is local." Empowerment works best at the

"Small Is Beautiful" scale.

"God speak in five"

The Panchayathi Raj model in India is based on the principle, the Vedic tradition of GodSpeaks in Five. Vinoba Bhave explained the Gandhian ideal of decentralization based on

Sarvodayathe good for everybodyat the village level, "it is a common saying in India

that if five speak with one voice, it should be understood as the word of God; that is, our

ancients believed in working with the consent of all" (India: the most dangerous decades,Selig Harrison, Princeton, New Jersey, 1960, p.316). Compare this picture with UNP, SLFP

or JVP supporters attacking and bombing each other at the village level in Sri Lanka!

Bioregional units and the Gram Raj concept

Sale spent decades tracing the phenomenon called the "human scale," but as a Western

scholar he missed giving attention in his research to the gram raj concept in Sri Lanka orthe panchayathi raj system in India. The village-level system of living and governance

that we found in Sri Lanka for thousands of years which was resurrected by the BritishGovernor Henry Ward in 1856, is similar to the Indian Panchayathi system, and it fits

neatly with the human scale discussed by Sale.

More importantly, the Gamsabava (village council) of Sri Lanka happened to be an

ecological unit that the Western industrial world is accepting as a solution to the social,

economic and ecological disasters found under the "developed" democratic capitalism of

the industrial world. Instead of big is better, small is beautiful is becoming one of the

solutions to global warming and pollution. Bioregions as political-administrative units is

promoted by a number of authors such as: Sale, Dwellers in the land: the bioregional

vision (1985, 2000); D. Aberley, Boundaries of home: mapping for local empowerment

(1993); M. McGinnis, Bioregionalism (1998) and H. Hannum, People, land, and


3/5

community(1997). A bioregion is an area that shares similar topography, plant andanimal life and culture.

Local government ministry

The Sarvodaya leader A.T. Ariayaratnes 1988 book, The Power Pyramid and the Dharmic

Cycle (Chapter 7) explains how the Trinity ofvillage-tank-temple worked as an organic

unit in Sri Lanka before colonialism crept in. Each village and a chain of villages

functioned with a river, oya or ela and one or several water tanks storing water

(hydrological units). Sri Lankan rural landscape is replete with thousands of such small

reservoir-based hydrological units. They encompass all 24 agro-ecological regions of Sri

Lanka. Brohiers map of the Walve Basin is like a collection of hundreds of small tanks. In

the past people prevented flooding by this short river with this kind of water storage

facilities in the upper and mid streams.

After 1948, the village councils came under the Local Government Ministry, and these

Colombo agents did not help the VCs to become viable administrative units. Partitionpolitics ruined them with rigid central control from Colombo without financial, resourceplanning or technical support. After 1978, VCs and TCs were killed alive and territorial

representation of people became a mechanical scheme at the national as well as the local

level. It is painful to read [t]he Report of the Local Government Reforms Commission

(Sessional Paper No. 1 of 1999, (the Abhayewardhana report) which discussed in detail

the "death" of the local government system. The report now dusting in some ministryoffice argued with objective facts why the country needs to go back to the pre-1980

village council system. Recently, from a lawyers perspective, Professor C.G.

Weeramantry also presented Grama Rajya as a model suitable for Sri Lanka (The Island,

5/20/2007).

Flexibility in size and numbers

In 1981 there were 549 VCs and 7137 wards, (Abhayewardhana report, p. 452). Sri

Lanka has 319 AGA divisions, 257 Pradeshiya Sabhas, and 38, 259 "villages" (www.statistics.gov.lk, 2002 data). Until the 1990s Sri Lanka had about 4000 GSN (grama

sevaka niladhaaree) divisions, which is now a mind boggling number of 14,009. By

selecting river basins/watersheds as the lowest village council level administrative unit for

Sri Lanka this GSN list could be reduced to an ecologically appropriate, socially equitable

and economically efficient number. The exhaustive water tanks inventory prepared by thelate Chief Justice Hema Basnayake could be useful in this regard.

Since watersheds/basins have a hierarchical order of progressively increasing in area/size

they can become a large River Basin Region at macro level. For example, seven suchRiver Basin Regions was proposed by the geography professor Madduma Bandara in 1987

in an essay in the Island newspaper. These could advantageously replace the presentarbitrary nine Provincial units. (ref. also, Chapter 4, in Fifty years of Sri Lankas

Independence: a socio economic review, edited by A.V. de S. Indraratna, 1998, p.83).(see Map: 1. Yalpanam, 2. Rajarata, 3. Dambadeni, 4. Mahaveli, 5. Deegavaapi, 6.

Kelani, 7. Ruhunu). Sri Lanka will be an example to the world fighting with ethnic andtribal wars if our leaders decide to come out of the box.

Under this spatial demarcation of river basins no unit is unusually large and each unit

gets it own coastal front. Each unit is interdependent by way of larger water transfer

projects already in operation. Thus the rain water falling on to the two sides of the roof of

the police station at Ginigathhena ends up in two river basins, Kelani and Mahaveli,

respectively. In Ohio, USA there is a county named Portage because Native


4/5

Indians/Alaskans coming from the Arctic seas by boats had to carry their boats over a

narrow strip of land to get into the Mississippi River System to go to South America! We

must not forget that the present PC boundaries came as a result of the decision by the

Colonial power to dismantle the Kandyan Kingdom. It had no connection with the historyor geography of the island.

While following a natural and not language-based boundary, river basin approach stillpermits ethnic enclaves to engage in achieving collective public aspirations. For example,

in the Panadura Area, there are at least three large Muslim enclaves: Totawatta, Eluvilaand Sarikkammulla. Under a VC system based on watersheds these ethnic concentrations

can have their own VCs by a combination of GSN areas or wards in larger VC units. Thusthe Deegavaapi Region would be able to accommodate the concerns of the Oluvil

Declaration. Similarly upcountry Tamils can think of watershed units which are mini-Malaya Nadus. Since the demarcation is by natural boundaries the threat of separatism ishowever, erased from the political formula.

Mahinda Chinthanaya

Actually, the Bioregional approach is enshrined in the Mahinda Chinthanaya Program

(MCP). MCP stated in November 2005 that the ruler should think of land, water, plants

and animals as an endowment given in trust for protection and just use and not to

destroy or abuse. This was what the Arhat Mahinda told the King Devanampiyatissa. In

the West, the Roman Emperor Justinian codified this rule (Sax, Joseph L. (1970), ThePublic Trust Doctrine in Natural Resource Law: Effective Judicial Intervention,Michigan

Law Review68(3) 471-566) and subsequently became part of the common law of USA

(by way of the Magna Carta in England) by the Supreme Court decision in 1892 (Illinois

Central Railroad v. Illinois, 146 U.S. 387).

MCP activities under the Village reawakening projects are recognition of VC units. The

SLFP proposal in April 2007 to empower people at the Gram Raj level thus follows theancient Buddhist principles as well as the modern Bioregional vision. In the 1940s the

late Ven. Kalukondayave Pragnasekera Mahanayaka Thero experimented and

implemented a village-based rural development and crime eradication movement with

the help of Justice Akbar, Tamil vilagers and young police officer, ASP Osmond de Silva,but the Colombo establishment at that time killed it and the Marxist Malaria aid workers

did not support it.

Why Sri Lanka needs Bioregions

Sri Lanka is witnessing today the adverse impact of unwise decisions taken by politicianswho are now dead. In the 1940s, Dr. S.A. Wickremasinghe was a lonely voice advocating

not to build one large reservoir but to develop a series of upstream small water reservoirs

under the Gal Oya development project. The economic and environmental costs of

ignoring his advice were enormous. In the 1980s the same mistake was done in twoprojects. The Mahaveli project should have been based on smaller reservoirs but it was a

colossal waste of money at the expense of the rest of the country, where paved roads

ended up as gravel paths covered by trees even in places so close to Colombo such as

Panadura. The earth subsidence and earth slips so frequent now in the adjacent areas of

the Mahaveli could be due to adjustments taking place on the earths crust because of the

weight of the huge water reservoirs in a limestone region. The second blunder was to

have a new state capital just 10 miles from the old capital erected by reclaiming the

swamp regions in the Kotte Area. This disruption of drainage basins led to subsequent


5/5

flooding of homes even in Colombo 7! Thus we do not need examples from othercountries to realize the importance of taking the bioregional approach.

In New Zealand, a small country with small river basins like in Sri Lanka, localgovernments units follow river basin boundaries under the Resources Management Act of

1991 (www.dia.govt.nz/www.stats.govt.nz). In North America, bioregional vision is

spreading in the face of energy crisis, pollution, water shortages and environmentaldegradation. In the year 2000, a map of eco-regions of North America was prepared by

Robert G. Bailey identifying 63 such regions. California divided the state into 11 distinctbioregions according to watersheds and specific flora and fauna and charted plans for

preserving biodiversity on bioregional grounds. There are now bioregional councils oflocal residents and watershed organizations. The Province of Ontario in Canada undertook

a study in the 1990s to reconcile the various zoning and planning ordinances of cities,towns and municipalities in its jurisdiction to develop a peninsular bioregion for the

Province. India has a plan already in place dividing the sub-continent by major river

basins.

Grievances vs. aspirations

A bioregion is an area that shares similar topography, plant and animal life and culture

(www.bioregionalsim.org). Because culture is a component shaping the bioregional unit,

the collective aspirations of people, even though it is a subjective matter, can be

accommodated within the bioregion concept. The fear that the Sinhala people have that aNorth or North plus East regional unit would secretly work with Tamil Nadu separatists is

erased when larger units evolve from smaller watershed-based ecological-political units

of VCs. What Sri Lanka needs is empower people so that each person/citizen achieves his

or her personal and family aspirations in a system of fairness and equal opportunitywithin a democratic framework. VCs based on bioregions provide the most effective and

reasonable vehicle in this regard. Sri Lanka therefore, already has its homegrown solution

instead of buying solutions offered by foreign agencies.

Documents

APRC and the Bio Regional Vision