Editorial

Ice caps are melting, sea levels are rising, so are forest fires on the rise; prolonged droughts and floods are ravaging countries across the world as nature’s fury is associated with Climate Change triggered by a warmer planet.

By its description, COP27 is the 27th annual global summit since 1995 when world leaders recognised the world was getting warmer, and for the worse. For 27 years they have been grappling with ways and means of tackling climate solutions which the UN Secretary General says must “match the scale of the problem”.

According to a UN report, in 2009, rich countries committed to providing economically developing countries adequate financial support, to the tune of USD 100 billion annually for any loss by extreme weather and for adopting alternatives to the use of fossil fuels, but that support is non-existent. This very issue has been “the elephant that never leaves the negotiating room” and will be a matter of great importance for developing countries even though it is not on the agenda at tomorrow’s COP27. The developed world and Russia are spending billions on a war in Ukraine, on the other hand.

The Group of 77 (G-77), a coalition of 134 developing countries which includes India and China, is expected to speak on the subject. Sri Lanka is a founder member of G-77 that banded together under the UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) banner where one of its own sons, Dr. Gamani Corea, was once Secretary General. It was a time when South-South cooperation was at its zenith as an off-shoot of the Non-Aligned Movement. It was also a time when Sri Lanka’s voice was heard in these foreign deliberations. Today, her voice abroad is muted.

Sri Lanka has been identified as one of the most vulnerable countries affected by Climate Change and is entitled to global funding, and its contribution to global greenhouse gas emission is a minuscule 0.03 percent, but its lack of expertise in applying for such climate finance mechanisms is preventing accruing maximum benefit.

President Gotabaya Rajapaksa attended COP26 last year in Scotland and spoke of Sri Lanka’s targets for reducing greenhouse gasses and shifting to renewable energy. He also made a virtue of his ‘No organic’ policy at home. President Ranil Wickremesinghe will be at COP27 and is expected to launch a ‘Climate Prosperity Plan’ focussing on strategies on how Sri Lanka could utilise new trends adopted in facing Climate Change for development. These include focusing on manufacturing climate-smart technologies, and earning foreign exchange, etc.

COP27 is expected to have a special focus on agriculture and food, unlike previous summits. Climate-Smart agriculture practices, off-farm and on-farm water management and developing community markets, etc., are on its agenda. Unfortunately, many relevant officials dealing with the subject at home are unable to attend this conference due to the foreign exchange crisis.

A roadmap for carbon neutrality by 2050 is still on the drawing boards in Sri Lanka. With obstructionist CEB brahmins stalling renewable energy (solar and wind) plans for the future, and deforestation continuing with political backing, mitigating the effects of Climate Change and adapting to changing weather patterns is a long and winding road ahead.

Of ‘Ministers Codes’

Last week’s hot-rodding young men inside a national park exposed what is systemic in the country’s socio-political context. What made the news was not that this was a group of inebriated students going on a jolly ride in forbidden terrain, but that a close relative of the minister in charge of conserving the country’s very national parks, wanted to ‘show off’ the uncle’s powers.

Several issues crop up from what happened. For one, these national parks have become money spinners for the State that there are no checks and balances on the number of vehicles and people allowed in at a given time. There are busloads picnicking inside on public holidays with left-over lunch packs and empty arrack bottles strewn all over open areas. Tuk-tuks are seen inside the park and some pathways are nicknamed ‘Main Street’, only the traffic lights are missing. Foreign visitors complain that the human population is such that the animals go into hiding.

Then there is the VIP traffic and those with influence abusing the parks, breaking all laws. The latest horror show involved 34 souped-up jeeps, but only seven are in custody. One would have thought the Inland Revenue Department would have followed up with a 1-V form on its owners. At a time when the entire country is tightening its belts with fuel rationing, how did those involved have enough to burn on an off-road private motor show?

The Minister is seemingly taking a ‘boys will be boys’ attitude many previous ministers of his ilk took when their kith and kin broke the law. This attitude has provoked the comeback; “ministers will be ministers”.

In the UK, there is a ‘Ministerial Code’ that has strict guidelines on how ministers must conduct themselves. Even a Prime Minister recently lost his job for violating that code. He had to face an inquiry as to whether he broke the law his own Government had put in place during the COVID lockdowns. Last month the Home Secretary lost her job for a violation of the code for leaking a ministerial draft document to an MP before it became public.

There’s none of that here. A draft code for ministers as a follow-up to the Code for MPs (April 2018) has been circulated to Government leaders. Going by the way MPs behaved in the chamber of the House, its sanctum sanctorum throwing missiles at each other and forcing the Speaker to his chair escorted by the police, it shows these codes are not worth the paper they are written on.

When ministers and MPs conduct themselves in such a manner, expecting demonstrators to show respect for the law seems meaningless, even hypocritical. To expect the Wildlife Department to hold an “impartial inquiry” as decreed by the President into the latest rowdy behaviour at the Yala National Park while the Minister of Wildlife remains at his desk is when pigs will fly.