Natural ecosystems: wetlands, swamps, lagoons, and lakes are increasingly encroached. It has resulted in innumerous conflicts and deteriorated natural habitats. Natural resource dependent communities have been at war with encroachers. This is common place in South Asia and boundary conflicts are called as positional disputes. Sri Lanka is no exception to this.
How encroachments happen proves to be an interesting area for study in Sri Lanka. Concrete posts fixed on boarders around wetlands or lagoons separate private lands. Many deeds of private lands include clauses such as; “north of this land goes up to the wetland or lagoon”. This clause creates much ambiguity in defining a specific boundary between a land and an ecosystem. Encroachers have used this ambiguity to their advantage. They fill the edges of lagoons, wetlands or reservoirs and move concrete posts forward. Consequently, lagoon water surfaces or areas of wetlands shrink, while the surrounding lands extend up. Resource based communities fill courts with lawsuits against encroachers. Cryptic clauses in deeds continue to have the upper hand.
Practical Action, Department of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources and Survey Department Sri Lanka have innovatively tried GPS (Global Positioning System) with Google Earth to help track down illegal encroachments in estuarine wetlands.
Survey teams develop estuarine wetlands maps with a boarder of GPS points which are followed by concrete posts being fixed on them. The surveyed maps with GPS points get publicized by a government gazette. Viewing them digitally is viable through Google Earth. If border posts are moved, tracking is easy because GPS points do not change and they are indisputable and specific. Accordingly, legal action against violators can go forward. Things can get far quicker when a smart phone can detect a change of a border post against a point.
The Kokkilai lagoon map was the first of this kind that came as a gazette in Sri Lanka. It is a lagoon with a water shed area of 53.491 km2 that spreads into two administrative districts.
Influence of Information technology is ubiquitous. People from all walks of life find it indispensable. No wonder mobile phones outnumber people in some countries. Smart phones and apps bring information at our fingertips. Rapid technological innovations are reshaping the world we live in with artificial intelligence. Surveillance cameras with digital brains get underway to analyse live videos with no humans. We are set in for what has been termed the “Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR). However technological advances remain market-driven. Markets seems count out environmental factors as externalities. It is time, technical innovations were realigned to help solve problems in poverty and environmental sustainability.
Technology alone cannot bring about changes that are socially useful and environmentally sustainable, it is the way we choose to access and develop technology will call forth justice.
The featured map is Garaduwa wetland in Matara Sri Lanka
