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Thalangama wetland: CEA amends 2007 gazette to allow elevated highway
Pic by M.A, Pushpakumara
The Central Environmental Authority (CEA) has amended a 2007 gazette declaring the ecologically-rich Thalangama wetland as an Environmentally Protected Area (EPA) to allow the elevated highway from New Kelani Bridge to Athurugiriya to cross the land.
Gazette 223/07 dated July 19 issued by the CEA is now listed on the website of the Department of Government Printing although the text is yet to be released. When an area is declared an EPA, the only activities permitted are paddy cultivation, fishing, nature trails, construction of security posts and towers for bird observation. This will be changed to permit more than 3km of roadway cross the Averihana Tank and surrounding paddy fields which are part of the Thalanga wetland.
Since 2007, the wetland and its surroundings are gazetted as an EPA under the National Environmental Act (NEA) owing to its “ecological, hydrological and historical importance”. The CEA initially resisted plans to traverse the wetland and sought advice from the Attorney General’s Department which advised that allowing a new “permitted use”, such as the construction of an elevated highway, would be a violation of the NEA.
However, the Government has already committed to the four-lane elevated highway which will be a build, operate and transfer project implemented by China Harbour Engineering Corporation (CHEC), to be handed back to Sri Lanka 15 years from the completion of construction (scheduled for end of 2023). It is billed as the first foreign direct investment project–valued at US$ 800mn–in expressway construction in the country.
However, residents who are being affected by the project as well as environmentalists protesting the destruction of the wetland have put up legal challenges. There are currently two writ applications before the Court of Appeal to protect the Thalangama wetland, including one by the Centre for Environmental Justice. The amendment of the gazette has taken place notwithstanding these cases.
A group of residents have now written to the United Nations Resident Coordinator in Sri Lanka Hanaa Singer-Hamdy highlighting the damage to the wetland. The road project will “affect the lives of thousands of residents and animal species and rare birds that inhabit the area due to vehicular emissions, noise pollution, flooding, reduction in carbon absorption and oxygen production…,” says the letter, sent this week.
It also says there were no public consultations or scientific and legally prescribed evaluations, such as an environmental impact assessment, when finalizing the route and awarding the contract to a foreign investor. There has been no transparency in dealing with financing mechanisms while “the taxpayers of the country will still have to pay the foreign contractor for any ‘viability gaps’ of the project during a 15-year period.”
“This is in effect allowing a foreign contractor to profit from the venture whist there could be destructions to an irreplaceable ecosystem asset of the country listed under the International Ramsar Convention,” the letter, a copy of which was seen by the Sunday Times, says. Ramsar wetland sites are designated to be of international importance under the Ramsar Convention, an intergovernmental environmental treaty established by UNESCO in the seventies.
“Alternative routes have been proposed in a writ application filed in the Appeal Court in March 2021, together with a proposal for issuance of green bonds to cover the extra costs of any alternative routes to prevent destruction but a decision has nevertheless been taken to utilize the protected wetlands instead, without adequate evaluation of the alternative proposed,” the residents protest.
A green bond is a type of fixed-income instrument that is specifically earmarked to raise money for climate and environmental projects.
The residents have requested Ms Singer-Hamdy to inform the agencies that administer respective instruments such as the International Ramsar Convention and the International Biodiversity Convention regarding these and other alleged violations included in the letter.