Sri Lanka: Blue carbon ecosystems at risk as government seeks way out of economic crisis

• Vidattaltivu Nature Reserve in northern Sri Lanka is an important coastal ecosystem that contains all the main blue carbon habitats, from mangroves to seagrass meadows to salt marshes and tidal flats.
• Despite this, the government recently ordered the removal of protection for a section of the reserve, which observers say is meant to free up land for the development of shrimp farms and similar economic activity.
• Local environmentalists have challenged this move in court, winning a temporary halt to its implementation as they make the case that any short-term economic gain would be dwarfed by the losses arising from destruction of the ecosystem and the attendant carbon emissions.
• While Sri Lanka has gained an international reputation for championing the protection of marine and coastal ecosystems, observers say they fear the country’s ongoing economic crisis may compel the government to release more protected areas for economic activity at the expense of nature.

In its legal challenge, WNPS argued that the issuance of the degazetting notification lacks legality, threatens conservation efforts, and was done without proper transparency or due process. “This is only an interim order, but we will resist the line ministry’s haphazard decision by working together with like-minded organizations,” WNPS president Graham Marshall told Mongabay.

While the government hasn’t disclosed the reason for the degazetting, Marshall said it may be to release land for aquaculture, particularly shrimp farming. He noted the Ministry of Fisheries had pushed for the establishment of such zones since 2018. Similar shrimp-farming projects along other parts of Sri Lanka’s northwest coastal during the 1990s resulted in widespread mangrove clearance and ultimately failed, causing lasting environmental damage, Marshall said.

According to a 2015 study, some 90% of those shrimp ponds had since been abandoned due to the unsustainable development of shrimp farms. These farms were established at the expense of coastal vegetation, with the clearing of mangroves resulting in a 75% total carbon loss, the study showed.

Jagath Gunawardana, a prominent environmental lawyer and conservationist, said that in the case of Vidattaltivu Nature Reserve, the government had failed to follow the established protocol for degazetting part of a protected area. The process requires a proper independent study to first be carried out. In this case, the study was conducted by an agency under the Ministry of Fisheries itself, Gunawardana says.

Because the area was designated a nature reserve under the Fauna and Flora Protection Ordinance (FFPO), the Department of Wildlife Conservation (DWC) set up a technical committee in 2018 consisting of various experts. “The technical committee after a detailed review concluded that Vidattaltivu should retain its original protection,” Gunawardana said. He noted that was more than five years ago; in the period since, new tools and techniques for assessing the importance of blue carbon ecosystems have been developed globally. Therefore, a new study needs to be conducted before making a critical decision such as stripping protection from an important ecosystem like Vidattaltivu, Gunawardana said.

Amid Sri Lanka’s severe economic crisis, other nature reserves could also risk losing their legal protection as the government looks for short-term economic gains, Gunawardana added. At the same time, Sri Lanka also continues to champion the Commonwealth Blue Charter’s Mangrove Ecosystems and Livelihoods Action Group (MELAG) and has carried out several programs to restore coastal areas where mangroves were cleared. The U.N. recognized Sri Lanka’s mangrove regeneration program among its 2024 World Restoration Flagships, an award that acknowledges outstanding efforts to restore nature.

“Restoring mangroves is harder than restoring any other ecosystem due to their slow growth and the significant resources and funds required,” said Sevvandi Jayakody, a professor in the Department of Aquaculture & Fisheries at Wayamba University, who has provided technical advice for the government’s mangrove restoration program.

“Instead of spending resources and funds to restore destroyed mangroves, it is far better to conserve the natural mangroves we still have,” Jayakody said, adding that “the focus should be on reusing the abandoned shrimp farms as much as possible, as these lands are already affected.” Northern Sri Lanka was the epicenter of the country’s three-decade civil war, during which Vidattaltivu was the base for the marine unit of the Tamil Tiger guerrilla group, known as the “Sea Tigers.” After the war ended in 2009, an integrated strategic environmental assessment (ISEA) of the region was conducted by various government agencies and stakeholders. This landmark ISEA study identified areas suitable for development activities and others that should be preserved for their ecosystem services to prevent the kind of unplanned development seen elsewhere. Vidattaltivu was one such area designated for protection. “We shouldn’t repeat the mistake of unplanned development, at least in Northern province,” Jayakody said. “The government can still pursue development following the ISEA.”

Vidattaltivu is also a key wintering ground for migratory birds, according to Uditha Hettige of the Ceylon Bird Club (CBC), who was a member of the technical team set up by the DWC to assess Vidattaltivu. In 2010, Hettige and his birding colleagues recorded an aggregation estimate of more than a million birds in the Vidattaltivu mudflats, the second-largest observation of its kind in the world. “The mudflats of Vidattaltivu are like fueling stations for migratory birds, making it a crucial habitat,” Hettige told Mongabay.

“Considering that the Vidattaltivu wetland complex plays a very important role in providing ecosystem services, it would cause long-term economic harm to destroy it for short-sighted, short-lived economic benefits,” said Gehan De Silva Wijeratne, a chartered accountant who has pioneered promoting Sri Lanka as a nature-based tourism destination.

Wijeratne noted that in many developed countries, coastal wetlands have been developed into important sites for bird-watchers, walkers and cyclists, contributing to local economies through nature-based tourism and offering recreational activities in natural settings. Sri Lanka could similarly use sites like Vidattaltivu for sustainable economic gains through domestic and international tourism. That makes preserving such sites not just environmentally crucial but also economically beneficial, he said. “Vidattaltivu is Sri Lanka’s prime seagrass habitat, and the collective ecosystem services these sites provide are also immense, so it’s a very disappointing decision to see it not being valued,” said Susantha Udagedara of the Blue Resources Trust, who conducted extensive research on the area’s seagrass habitats.

“We recently estimated the blue carbon stock of seagrass in VNR and there were important findings which will come out as a publication soon,” Udagedara told Mongabay. Vidattaltivu is also a rich fishing ground, where traditional artisanal fishery thrives. Rajan Sandan from the Vidattaltivu Fishermen’s Cooperative Society told Mongabay that the government should consider the livelihoods of local fishers, as the destruction of this environment could reduce fish stocks by destroying their breeding habitats.

“In Vidattaltivu, there are already two existing shrimp farms that release untreated polluted water into the sea. If protection of Vidattaltivu Nature Reserve is removed and an aquaculture park is established, what guarantee is there that it would be nature-friendly?” said Sandan, echoing widely held concerns about potential new developments. “It could mean the end of our livelihood,” he went on. “The ecosystem is so critical for the sustainability of local fisheries. But in these kinds of decision-making, impacted people do not matter, it seems.”