On 27 April 2017, I addressed a press conference at the Department of Government Information, Colombo, as a citizen concerned about waste management in Sri Lanka. I was joined by Ven Hadigalle Wimalarasa thero and Hemantha Withanage, Executive Director of Centre for Environmental Justice (CEJ) Sri Lanka, an advocacy group.
Nalaka Gunawardene (centre) addressing press conference of Lankan citizens concerned about waste management, at Dept of Govt Information, Colombo, 27 April 2017.
Image courtesy: Health Education Bureau, Ministry of Health, Sri Lanka
Beginning in the 1990s, thousands of people in Sri Lanka’s Dry Zone – heartland of its rice farming — developed kidney failure without having diabetes or high blood pressure, the common causative factors. Most affected were men aged 30 to 60 years, who worked as farmers. As numbers rose, puzzled doctors and other scientists started probing possible causes for what is now named Chronic Kidney Disease of unknown etiology (abbreviated as CKDu).
CKDu has become a fully-fledged public health crisis and humanitarian emergency, affecting thousands of people and their families – most of them subsistence farmers. Investigating causes of this ailment — still not pinned down to a specific cause or factor — has proven difficult. While scientists follow rigorous scientific methods, some ultra-nationalists and opportunistic politicians are trying to hijack the issue for their own agenda setting.
Sadly, some journalists and media outlets have added fuel to the fire with sensationalist reporting and unwarranted fear-mongering. For several years, I have documented the kind of misinformation, myths and pseudo-science uncritically peddled by Lankan media on CKDu.
In late 2012, speaking at an Asian science communication workshop held in Colombo, I first coined the phrase: Mass Media Failure is complicating Mass Kidney Failure. In December 2015, I revisited and updated this analysis, arguing that there are many reasons for systemic media failure in Sri Lanka that has allowed ultra-nationalists and certain environmental activists to pollute the public mind with half-truths and conspiracy theories. These need media industry level reform. Meanwhile, for improving the CKDu information flow in society, I proposed some short, medium and long term recommendations.
Op-ed written for The Weekend Express broadsheet newspaper in Sri Lanka, 18 November 2016
The Big Unknown: Climate action under President Trump – By Nalaka Gunawardene, Weekend Express, 18 Nov 2016
What does Donald Trump’s election as the next President of the United States mean for action to contain climate change?
The billionaire non-politician — who lost the popular vote by more than a million votes but won the presidency on the basis of the electoral college — has long questioned the science underlying climate change.
He also sees political and other motives in climate action. For example, he tweeted on 6 November 2012: “The concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive.”
Trump’s tweet on 6 November 2012 – What does it mean for his administration?
His vice president, Indiana governor Mike Pence, also does not believe that climate change is caused by human activity.
Does this spell doom for the world’s governments trying to avoid the worst case scenarios in global warming, now widely accepted by scientists as driven by human activity – especially the burning of petroleum and coal?
It is just too early to tell, but the early signs are not promising.
“Trump should drop his pantomime-villain act on climate change. If he does not, then, come January, he will be the only world leader who fails to acknowledge the threat for what it is: urgent, serious and demanding of mature and reasoned debate and action,” said the scientific journal Nature in an editorial on 16 November 2016.
It added: “The world has made its decision on climate change. Action is too slow and too weak, but momentum is building. Opportunities and fortunes are being made. Trump the businessman must realize that the logical response is not to cry hoax and turn his back. The politician in Trump should do what he promised: reject political orthodoxy and listen to the US people.”
It was only on 4 November 2016 that the Paris climate agreement came into force. This is the first time that nearly 200 governments have agreed on legally binding limits to emissions that cause global warming.
All governments that have ratified the accord — which includes the US, China, India and the EU — carry an obligation to contain global warming to no more than 2 degrees Centigrade above pre-industrial levels. Scientists regard that as the safe limit, beyond which climate change is likely to be both catastrophic and irreversible.
It has been a long and bumpy road to reach this point since the UN framework convention on climate change (UNFCCC) was adopted in 1992. UNFCCC provides the umbrella under which the Paris Agreement works.
High level officials and politicians from 197 countries that have ratified the UNFCCC are meeting in Marrakesh, Morocco, this month to iron out the operational details of the Paris Agreement.
Speaking at the Marrakesh meeting this week, China’s vice foreign minister, Liu Zhenmin, pointed out that it was in fact Trump’s Republican predecessors who launched climate negotiations almost three decades ago.
It was only three months ago that the world’s biggest greenhouse gas emitters – China and the US — agreed to ratify the Paris agreement during a meeting between the Chinese and US presidents.
Chandra Bhushan, Deputy Director General of the Centre for Science and Environment (CSE), an independent advocacy group in Delhi, has just shared his thoughts on the Trump impact on climate action.
“Will a Trump presidency revoke the ratification of the Paris Agreement? Even if he is not able to revoke it because of international pressure…he will dumb down the US action on climate change. Which means that international collaboration being built around the Paris Agreement will suffer,” he said in a video published on YouTube (see: https://goo.gl/r6KGip)
“If the US is not going to take ambitious actions on climate change, I don’t think India or Chine will take ambitious actions either. We are therefore looking at a presidency which is going to push climate action around the world down the barrel,” he added.
During his campaign, Trump advocated “energy independence” for the United States (which meant reducing or eliminating the reliance on Middle Eastern oil). But he has been critical of subsidies for solar and wind power, and threatened to end regulations that sought to end the expansion of petroleum and coal use. In other words, he would likely encourage dig more and more domestically for oil.
“Trump doesn’t believe that renewable energy is an important part of the energy future for the world,” says Chandra Bhushan. “He believes that climate change is a conspiracy against the United States…So we are going to deal with a US presidency which is extremely anti-climate.”
Bhushan says Trump can revoke far more easily domestic laws like the Clean Power Plan that President Obama initiated in 2015. It set a national limit on carbon pollution produced from power plants.
“Therefore, whatever (positive) action that we thought was going to happen in the US are in jeopardy. We just have to watch and ensure that, even when an anti-climate administration takes over, we do not allow things to slide down (at global level action),” Bhushan says.
Some science advocates caution against a rush to judgement about how the Trump administration will approach science in general, and climate action in particular.
Nature’s editorial noted: “There is a huge difference between campaigning and governing…It is impossible to know what direction the United States will take under Trump’s stewardship, not least because his campaign was inconsistent, contradictory and so full of falsehood and evasion.”
We can only hope that Trump’s business pragmatism would prevail over climate action. As the Anglo-French environmental activist Edward Goldsmith said years ago, there can be no trade on a dead planet.
Nalaka Gunawardene speaks at national conference on Sri Lanka’s readiness for implementing the Paris Agreement. BMICH Colombo, 8 September 2016
Climate change COP21 in December 2015 adopted the Paris Agreement to avoid, mitigate and adapt to climate change. Among many other solutions, Sri Lanka’s “intended nationally determined contribution” (INDC) has agreed to reduce 7% emissions from energy and transport and 23% conditional reductions by 2030.
Sri Lanka’s Centre for Environmental Justice in collaboration with the government’s Climate Change Secretariat, UNDP and Janathakshan held a national conference on “SRI LANKA’S READINESS FOR IMPLEMENTING PARIS CLIMATE AGREEMENT” on 7 and 8 September 2016 in Colombo. It was attended by over 200 representatives from government, civil society and corporate sectors.
I was asked to speak in Session 5: Climate Solutions, on “Climate communication and Behaviour changes”. This is a summary of what I said, and the PowerPoint presentation used.
L to R: Nalaka Gunawardene; Nalin Munasinghe, National Programme Manager at Sri Lanka UN-REDD Programme, and Uchita de Zoysa
As climate change impacts are felt more widely, the imperative for action is greater than ever. Telling the climate story in accurate and accessible ways should be an essential part of our climate response.
That response is currently organised around two ‘planks’: mitigation and adaptation. Climate communication can be the ‘third plank’ that strengthens the first two.
Encouragingly, more journalists, broadcasters, researchers and advocacy groups are taking up this challenge. They urgently need more media and public spaces — as well as greater resources — to sustain public engagement.
The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), which Sri Lanka has signed and ratified, recognizes the importance of IEC. It calls for “improving awareness and understanding of climate change, and creating solutions to facilitate access to information on a changing climate” to winning public support for climate related policies.
The UNFCCC, through its Article 6, and its Kyoto Protocol, through its Article 10 (e), call on governments “to educate, empower and engage all stakeholders and major groups on policies relating to climate change”.
When strategically carried out, IEC can be a powerful force for change on both the ‘supply’ and ‘demand’ sides of climate adaptation and climate related public information. In this analogy:
‘supply’ involves providing authentic, relevant and timely information to all those who need it, in languages and formats they can readily use; and
‘demand’ means inspiring more individuals and entities to look for specific knowledge and skills that can help make themselves more climate resilient.
These two sides of the equation can positively reinforce each other, contributing significantly to Sri Lanka’s fight against climate change.
To be effective, climate communication also needs to strike a balance between alarmism and complacence. We have to place climate concerns within wider development and social justice debates. We must also localise and personalise as much as possible.
Dr M Sanjayan, vice president of development and communications strategy at Conservation International, a leading advocacy group, says environmentalists and scientists have failed to build sufficient urgency for action on climate change. He feels we need new communication approaches.
The Lankan-born science communicator wrote in 2013: “By focusing on strong narratives about peoples’ lives in the present rather than the future; by keeping stories local and action-oriented (solvable); and by harnessing the power of narrative and emotion, we have a better chance to build widespread public support for solutions.”
Soorya Bala Sangramaya – සූර්යබල සංග්රාමය Image courtesy Ministry of Power and Renewable Energy, Sri Lanka
In this week’s Ravaya column (in Sinhala, appearing in the print issue of 28 August 2016), I applaud the Sri Lanka government’s new solar power generation programme, and suggest ways in which it can be made more effective in securing energy independence of the nation.
The global trend, especially for domestic and small scale electricity users, is towards decentralized and distributed energy systems. In this scenario, users generate power on site, tapping into renewable sources available locally.
How can our tropical island plug into the sun, wind, trees and the ocean to meet more of our energy needs? Why don’t renewable energies produce a larger share of our energy mix? Who or what are the bottlenecks? I discuss these and other related issues in the column this week.
Self-generating electricity from renewables is slowly picking up, partly encouraged by the introduction in 2009 of net metering. This allows private individuals or companies to “sell” their surplus power to the national grid (the transaction happens in kind, not cash). A two-way electricity meter enables this process.
In August 2016, the Cabinet approved a community based solar power generation programme. Known as “Soorya Bala Sangramaya” (Battle for Solar Energy), it is expected to make at least 20% of electricity consumers to also generate electricity using solar panels – they will be able to sell their excess to the national grid under a guaranteed tariff.
Announcing the Cabinet decision, the government said: “Currently 50% of electricity production in Sri Lanka is done by renewable energy sources and it is expected to increase this percentage to 60% in 2020 and to 70% in 2030. Accordingly, it is required to build wind power plants of 600 MW and solar power plants of 3,000 MW within the next 10 years. It is expected to join consumers in power generation and to promote small solar power plants established on the roof of their houses by the project called ‘Soorya Bala Sangramaya’. It is expected to make at least 20% of consumers to produce electricity and it is expected pay for the excess electricity generated by the consumer.”
In this week’s Ravaya column (appearing in the print issue of 21 August 2016), I take a critical look at the Sri Lanka government’s new ‘Toxin-Free Nation” effort. Announced in 2015, it is a three year programme (2016-2018) “to convert Sri Lanka into a green nation and enable its citizens to enjoy foods free of chemicals and agro-toxins”.
Curiously, the programme is being implemented by a state entity called the Strategic Enterprise Management Agency (SEMA), set up in 2004 originally to monitor and support state owned enterprises. The century old and widely experienced Department of Agriculture is not involved (and apparently fully excluded).
Toxin free country – SEMA image
According to the official programme document, available on SEMA website, “the aim of the program is to replace import driven agrochemical based agriculture with organic, sustainable natural agro-culture.”
[Quoted verbatim: not sure why they insist on using the term agro-culture instead of agriculture.]
The document claims, without citing any references or sources, that Sri Lanka spends LKR 300 billion a year “to import milk products, sugar, agrochemicals, seeds, etc., while farmer subsidies account for a further Rs.30 billion a year” (p12).
It further says, on p23, “As a long-term strategy for toxin-free agriculture, it is anticipated that indigenous rice varieties will significantly replace the improved varieties that are presently grown by farmers. According to the plan, 30% of rice produced in Sri Lanka would be indigenous varieties at the end of the three year plan. Further, organic, natural, biological fertilizers and pest repellants will replace the agrochemicals used to cultivate these improved varieties and it is anticipated that these toxins will be completely eradicated from Sri Lankan soil by the third year of the program.”
The document is full of uncorroborated claims and seemingly unrealistic goals. In 2014, organically farmed land accounted for less than one percent of the total cultivated land in Sri Lanka.
The exact methodology of going from under 1 percent to 33% in three years is not clear. On p15, the document says: “A toxin-less agro-culture is a system geared to obtain the required “plant-food” from the air, the land and the immediate environment. Multicropping, soil conservation, water and irrigation management, promoting the presence of agrofriendly fauna and flora as well as mechanical systems for pest control are all part of these systems.”
The plan lists a 10 point, multi-pronged approach as follows:
The plan does make some sense when it takes stock of organically grown food available in the market today. “In 2015, the price of organics was two or three times that of foods produced with the application of agrochemicals. Therefore, only the middle upper and upper income bracket of consumer could afford them leaving the common citizen of the country no choice but to purchase and consume toxin laced alternatives.” (p13).
I have been saying this for years. As I wrote in August 2014: “Despite their appeal, organics will remain a niche market, albeit a growing one, for years to come. Nobody wants to eat food laced with agrochemical residues (for which no safe upper limits have been set in Sri Lanka). But when organics typically cost 50% or more than non-organics, how many can really afford it? Unless this gap is narrowed, organics will remain beyond reach for many.”
As a long standing watcher and commentator on conservation farming (which is bigger than organics), I have been seeking clarity on this Toxin-Free Nation plan of Sri Lanka, being spearheaded by President Maithripala Sirisena himself. But his staff involved in promoting and implementing the programme have opted not to respond to specific queries in the public media and scientific forums.
Worse, they have shown high levels of intolerance towards critics — sometimes vilifying critics as ‘agents of chemical farming’ or ‘promoters of agrochemical companies’! This utter failure to engage is inconsistent with good governance policies of the President and government. The Department of Agriculture being excluded from the whole process is also a matter for grave concern: this means there now are TWO parallel structures for farming policy and promotion in Sri Lanka!
In this column, I call for a dispassionate, rational discussion of this politically driven national programme for toxin-free farming. I also refer to three outstanding Lankan scientists who have advocated conservation farming for decades – but they have done so without the intellectual arrogance and confrontational politics of the current effort. These pathfinders are: late Dr Ray Wijewardene, Dr Lionel Weerakoon and Dr Parakrama Waidyanatha.
L to R – Dr Lionel Weerakoon, Dr Parakrama Waiyanatha, Asoka Abeygunawardena
Uncritical media reporting (such as this one in state media) leaves the Toxin-Free Nation Programme unchallenged even when its claims and plans don’t add up…
Image courtesy – Health Education Bureau of Sri Lanka
In this week’s Ravaya column (in Sinhala, published in issue dated 15 May 2016),, I revisit a public health emergency that I have been writing about for several years: mass kidney failure for no known reason.
Beginning in the 1990s, thousands of people in Sri Lanka’s Dry Zone – heartland of its rice farming — developed kidney failure without having diabetes or high blood pressure, the common causative factors. Most affected were men aged 30 to 60 years, who worked as farmers. As numbers rose, puzzled doctors and other scientists started probing possible causes for what is now named Chronic Kidney Disease of unknown etiology (abbreviated as CKDu).
CKDu has become a fully fledged humanitarian emergency, affecting thousands of people and their families – most of them subsistence farmers.
Investigating causes of this ailment — still not pinned down to a specific cause or factor — has proven difficult. While scientists follow rigorous scientific methods, some ultra-nationalists and opportunistic politicians are trying to hijack the issue for their own agenda setting. Some journalists have added fuel to the fire with sensationalist reporting and unwarranted fear-mongering.
On 9 May 2016, I moderated High Level Media Dialogue on Chronic Kidney Disease of Unknown Aetiology (CKDu) and Public Health in Colombo. It was organised jointly by the Ministry of Health, Nutrition and Indigenous Medicine; Ministry of Parliamentary Reforms and Mass Media; and theCoordinating Secretariat for Science, Technology and Innovation (COSTI) of the Ministry of Science, Technology and Research.
Three experienced medical professionals joined our conversation: Dr Tilak Abeysekera, Consultant Nephrologist, Nephrology Dialysis and Transplant Unit, General Hospital, Kandy; Dr Palitha Mahipala, Director General, Health Services, Ministry of Health, Nutrition and Indigenous Medicine; and Dr Vinya Ariyaratne, General Secretary of Sarvodaya and consultant community physician.
In this column, I summarise some of the latest scientific analysis and humanitarian issues that were presented during the event.
See also my other writing on the subject (some early ones are updated in this latest Ravaya column):
Jayanthi Kuru-Utumpala and Johann Peries: Aiming it real high…
An experienced mountaineering duo, Jayanthi Kuru-Utumpala and Johann Peries, are the first Lankans to attempt the summit of Mt. Everest in the forthcoming Spring 2016 mountaineering season.
They have both individually and as a team successfully completed some of the world’s most challenging treks in Asia, Africa and Latin America – not to mention all key peaks in Sri Lanka.
Professionally, Jayanthi is a women’s rights and gender expert while Johann is a hair and make-up designer and performing artist. They are dedicating this climb to their families, to the causes they advocate (conservation, gender equality and healthy living), and to every child, woman and man of Sri Lanka.
They plan to be part of a larger team led by International Mountain Guides (IMG), a globally renowned mountaineering company which has led several successful Mt. Everest expeditions over the past 30 years.
In this week’s Ravaya column (appearing in the print issue of 27 March 2016), I look at the history of Everest exploration and the two Lankans plans to conquer it.
See also my recent English interview with the duo:
In February 2013, I interviewed Imalka de Silva, the first Lankan woman to visit Antarctica. She accomplished this feat in March 2010 when she joined an international team who spent two weeks on an expedition to the frozen continent.
I have just interviewed an experienced Lankan mountaineering duo, Jayanthi Kuru-Utumpala and Johann Peries, who plan to be the first Sri Lankans to reach the summit of Mt. Everest in the forthcoming Spring mountaineering season.
Jayanthi Kuru-Utumpala and Johann Peries: Aiming it real high…
They have both individually and as a team successfully completed some of the world’s most challenging treks in Asia, Africa and Latin America – not to mention all key peaks in Sri Lanka.
Mount Everest is located in the Mahalangur mountain range in Nepal and Tibet, and its peak is 8,848 metres (29,029 ft) above sea level. It has so far been reached by over 4,000 people from many countries.
Professionally, Jayanthi is a women’s rights and gender expert while Johann is a hair and make-up designer and performing artist. They are dedicating this climb to their families, to the causes they advocate (conservation, gender equality and healthy living), and to every child, woman and man of Sri Lanka.
They plan to be part of a larger team led by International Mountain Guides (IMG), a globally renowned mountaineering company which has led several successful Mt. Everest expeditions over the past 30 years.
Read my full interview in The Sunday Observer (Sri Lanka), 28 Feb 2016:
Science writer Nalaka Gunawardene speaks at National Policy Workshop on Prevention of Chronic Kidney Disease, held in Colombo on 16 Dec 2015
On 16 December 2015, I was invited by Sri Lanka’s Presidential Task Force for the Prevention of Chronic Kidney Disease to speak on this topic at the NATIONAL WORKSHOP ON PREVENTION OF CHORNIC KIDNEY DISEASE held in Colombo.
Speaking to an audience of scientists, health and agriculture sector public officials and policy makers, I briefly explored the kind of misinformation, myths and pseudo-science uncritically peddled by Lankan media.
Professor Rezvi Sheriff, Sri Lanka’s top kidney specialist, chairing National Policy Workshop on CKDu in Colombo, 16 Dec 2015
Scientists are researching widely on what causes the Chronic Kidney Disease of unknown etiology (CKDu) in Sri Lanka that affects thousands of people (mostly farm workers) and burdens the public healthcare system. As health officials and policy makers struggle with the prolonged humanitarian emergency, unprofessional and fear-mongering media coverage often adds to public confusion and fear.
As a science writer, I have long been concerned about public communication of risk in times of distress. In late 2012, speaking at an Asian science communication workshop held in Colombo, I first coined the phrase: Mass Media Failure is complicating Mass Kidney Failure.
I revisited and updated this analysis,arguing that there are many reasons for systemic media failure in Sri Lanka that has allowed ultra-nationalists and certain environmental activists to pollute the public mind with half-truths and conspiracy theories. These need media industry level reform.
Meanwhile, for improving the CKDu information flow in society, I proposed some short, medium and long term recommendations.
Open Minds! (formerly: Moving Images blog) 
