The road north to Kilinochchi

I’d done lots of reading and my conversations with local staff had painted in some detail. But I was utterly unprepared.

It takes 9 hours to drive from Colombo to Kilinochchi.

Colombo is the prosperous-looking capital of Sri Lanka, a middle income country. I’d chatted to a man working at my hotel in Colombo. He described to me how Sri Lanka is working for the Big People. But for him – a family man with two kids working 18 hour shifts as attendant and earning less in a month than the rate of my hotel room (a big overstatement, for certain, but we all understand his point) – life is difficult. High inflation of prices for essentials is just making it harder. He was describing a common predicament – large gap between rich and poor in middle income countries – and I felt for him.

But the road up to Kilinochchi is a journey into a different, more complex world. Not simply the inequitable one that I have seen before.

At first, from Puttalam to Anuradhapura, the evidence of conflict is not what you might expect. We’re in the heart of elephant country. A recent ‘census’ counted over 7,000 wild elephants in Sri Lanka. Human-elephant country is a serious problem. Government policies yo-yo between discouraging settlement in elephant passes to intentional development in the areas. I see houses abandoned. The patchwork of rice fields remains untended.

After Anuradhapura we begin to pass garrison after garrison of government troops: A silent, ominous, quickening drum roll. A war occurred here.

A ruined UNICEF building, Kilinochchi, Sri Lanka

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Buddhist Sinhalese and Hindu Tamils have lived side by side on the Island for over 2000 years. Mostly they have been able to find peaceful co-existence. Throughout history however Sri Lanka has suffered invasions from India. These have periodically stoked popular resentment amongst the Sinhalese towards the Tamils, who share deep ties with populations in India, Tamil Nadu in particular. Tamils have been treated as outsiders. There have been times when large numbers of Tamils have evacuated or been expelled to India.

The British colonial period threw toxic yeast into the mix. In an account that so echoes what I understand of Rwanda, my colleague Rane puts me straight. When the British took control of the island in 1815 they sought to take the power away from ‘trouble-making’ Sinhalese leaders by eroding the institutions on which their statuses were founded. They abolished slavery and replaced in kind servitude with salaried labour. The British promoted the minority Tamils into a ruling class, appointing them to all the leadership roles of public office. They invested in their education, already at a higher level than the Sinhalese, in so doing entrenching this divide and rule order. When Sri Lankan Tamils were not malleable to the plan, the British brought in Indians to do the job. By the time Sri Lanka (which was called Ceylon at the time) achieved independence in 1948 the British had transformed the economy (tea anyone?), turned the structures of power in the country on their heads, and created an environment ripe for ethnic conflict.

Support for Buddhist-Nationalism grew strong. When in power populist leaders took increasingly steps to reaffirm the Sinhalese at the centre of culture and Buddhism as the dominating religion. In 1972 the number of Tamil places in universities was capped and Buddhism was written into new legislation as holding the “foremost place” amongst the island’s religions. Widespread unrest ensued and groups of young Tamils, including The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), called for an independent Tamil state in the north and the east. They established jungle guerrilla bases.

Boiling point hit in 1983 when the Tamil Tigers ambushed and massacred an army patrol in the Jaffna region. The Sinhalese retaliated with a month of killing and looting, now known as Black July. As many as two thousand people were slaughtered, and whole areas were levelled.

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The war lasted 26 years. The war had its ebbs, including an unstable ceasefire from 2002 to 2005. But its crests were horrific. Upwards of 100,000 women, men and children, a large proportion of them civilians, were killed. Over 1 million people were displaced. War crimes were almost certainly perpetrated by both sides, but with no independent observers allowed into the war zones, nothing can be confirmed.

Kilinochchi town was the base of the Tamil Tigers, the symbolic capital of their Eelam. The district was the place of the Tamil Tigers’ last stand to the Sri Lanka Army’s massive offensive in 2008. By the time President Rajapakse declared the final victory of the Sri Lanka Army in May 2009, and a conclusive end to the war, Kilinochchi had been utterly flattened.

Kilinochchi is where I am heading. (This blog was written in October 2011).

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I’m on assignment to provide technical support for pro-poor market development as part of Practical Action’s one-year rehabilitation and recovery project here. I’m delivering training to our staff and a number of other agencies working in the conflict affected north and east – CARE, Oxfam, Worldvision and UNDP. I am the first Practical Action head office staff to go there.

United Nations Development Program at the training workshop, Sri Lanka

It was as we passed Vuvuniya, after the army checkpoint, that my stomach started turning.

On the final 70 km stretch to Kilinochchi there are more bunkers than other buildings put together. Hardly a single building from three years ago remains. The buildings that stand are mostly the result of the UN’s Refugee Agency: corrugated iron shacks covered with waterproof sheets, and occasionally, newly built ‘permanent resettlements’. There are far more soldiers than civilians. Every road, bridge and irrigation channel has been blown up.

It’s dark by now. On the insignificant upside, there is so little around that there’s no light pollution. As the driver, Bandara, and I take a cheeky pee on the side of the road, I can see the Milky Way.

Temporary shelter, paid for by the US government, Kilinochchi, Sri Lanka

In the two and a half years since the end of the war, reconstruction and rehabilitation has started apace. Road building, bridge repair, irrigation rehabilitation. De-mining programmes abound. Large scale programmes to return internally displaced persons have made swift, safe and effective progress. ‘Return’ often proves to be a misleading word though, many ‘returnees’ have been resettled in new locations, bringing both challenges and opportunities. All work is led or closely monitored by the government, and financed by the international humanitarian and development industries. Faith-based groups (especially Christian) tend to be at the forefront of putting civil society roots back in the ground.

Returning home, Kilinochchi, Sri Lanka

The private sector is patchy. The biggest companies who are kitted out to cope with high risk have re-established themselves. Cargill’s national supermarket chain, for example, has set-up a new supermarket even before the road leading to it is completely finished. Individual entrepreneurship is also strong. This is a consequence of many not having access to natural resources; traditional occupations on which they used to depend difficult to return to. This entrepreneurship comes in every flavour: Small shops selling small goods; tractor rental; basic eateries; and also prostitution, largely serving the humanitarian expats. My colleague Sampath tells me that in Batticola, another conflict-affected district, as much as 40 % of women who have lost their husbands in the war have entered into prostitution. There’s also a missing middle to the business environment: small and medium enterprises do not have the skills and resources to understand the risks and opportunities of this post-conflict world.

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Practical Action’s project here is called A New Beginning – Rehabilitating Irrigation Infrastructure and Initialising Market Development.  It is funded by the United States government Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance (OFDA).

With the traditional tanks in disrepair, the returnee communities wait for the government to deliver water each week, Kilinochchi, Sri Lanka

The team here is working with recent returnees and government engineers to rebuild traditional water tanks in two locations. The tanks are little more than natural bowls, each around half a kilometre in length and width. The natural edges of the bowls are raised with soil covered in grass, and strategic channels and gates are installed to allow locals to control the flow of water. Maintenance of the banks and the irrigation gates is traditionally carried out by the communities living around the tanks. Rain water is captured and stored during the monsoon and channelled into fields in the torrid dry season. The bowls also raise the surrounding water table, keeping wells filled higher and for longer and create an oasis for wildlife. To me this is a perfect example of indigenous, intermediate technology.

Returnees plan the irrigation rehabilitation, Kilinochchi, Sri Lanka

With Kilinochchi in the heart of the conflict zone for the most of the 26-year war, these communities have had to flee their homes and lives, sometimes on a number of occasions and often for years at a time. Families are now returning, but empty handed and often penniless, they do not have the resources to maintain the tanks as they had done in the past.

To get the tanks back into good shape the project uses a common humanitarian approach – ‘cash-for-work’ – offering incomes to returning locals by hiring them to do the work.

Locals work on raising the banks of the tank, Kilinochchi, Sri Lanka

As Suganthan, the project’s technical officer tells me, this approach is much harder to use effectively and not necessarily desirable.

Most other humanitarian cash-for-work programs around here are really just trying to shift cash to returnees, and use cash-for-work as a guise to argue that they are not creating aid dependency. In practice though these programmes hardly judge their performance on getting the ‘work’ that is carried out, and care little whether those hired actually work or not. Often they don’t. Workers sit under trees all day and they still collect the cash in the evening. The work doesn’t get done, is it is done poorly and no-one cares. Aid dependency still festers.

The approach in this project is different. We really want the work to be done. The completion of the tank rehabilitation in time for the end-of-year rains will determine whether the returnees can grow anything in the dry season in the new year. So Suganthan calls Practical Action’s approach ‘work-for-cash’. If locals want to work, they can, and they’ll earn something, he explains. “If this doesn’t happen, we hire local construction companies to get the work done.”

In reality around 60 % of the work is carried out by the poor. Poor people spend some time working on the tanks and spend the rest of their time rebuilding their homes and preparing their fields.

Local construction companies working on the tank rehabilitation, Kilinochchi, Sri Lanka

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(written a few months later) Now in March, with tanks full, irrigation systems ready and the dry season arriving, the project now helps the locals around the tanks to recommence vegetable or fruit production. These are crops that can bring in income, what these people say they really need most.

The tank, now rehabilitated, Kilinochchi, Sri Lanka

Many other livelihood support programmes around here and elsewhere focus entirely on agricultural production and end up panicking when the project ‘beneficiaries’ produce a glut of produce no-one wants to buy.  Again Practical Action’s team is taking a different approach.

We are working with the farmers and other people who work in agriculture to think about the demand for crops in the end markets: local ones, those in Jaffna up north, and those down south and identify what can be done to meet this demand. The team is facilitating a process that enables poor returnees to produce in-demand fruit and vegetables in an environmentally sustainable way and sell them for reliable prices into the markets that want them.

To make agriculture work again for those most in need, the team realises that production needs to be demand-driven and the market system as a whole needs to work well. The team therefore works not just with the poor farmers but also with other actors in the whole supply chain that takes produce from the field to the kitchen table and the fruit bowl. These actors include traders, buyers and retailers. We also work with the people who provide important services for the farmers such as agricultural advice and inputs. Many of these actors face their own huge challenges in this post-conflict situation: they feel the risks and cost of doing business here are too high, they are ill-equipped and have poor skills. The networks and relationships their occupations depend on are non-existent or hostile, as a result of the war and the displacement it caused. If their problems are not addressed alongside those of the farmers, then the returnees’ produce will not find reasonable and reliable prices.

Using market maps to understand the whole agricultural system, from seed to kitchen table, Sri Lanka

In this way the project is demonstrating the potential of the area and its farmers, encouraging the government and others take seriously the opportunities that exist here and begin to reinvest in small farmers.

Keeping Sri Lanka Green Hot

katiewelford
November 16th, 2011

“Practical Action has made an immense contribution to renewable energy in Sri Lanka! Everywhere you go there is solar or wind power and people will say it is thanks to Practical Action,” Professor R. Shanthini enthusiastically told attendees at the International Conference on Bioenergy, organised as part of the PISCES consortium visits. As someone who works for Practical Action, this is always great to hear.

Professor Shanthini is a chemical engineer interested in particular in the link between CO² emmissions and a country’s gross domestic product (GDP), which is one way of measuring how big a country’s economy is. Sri Lanka’s GDP is growing and it now has ‘middle-income country’ status, meaning that average incomes per person have gone up. Whilst this is in many ways welcome, it brings a new set of challenges and one of them is on energy.

As country’s go, Sri Lanka’s green credentials seem full of potential. The Government has a mandate to supply 20% of the country’s energy through renewable sources by 2020. There is an awareness and use of small-scale, off-grid renewables in the country, that Practical Action has, as Professor Shanthini said, made a fantastic contribution to- take a look at a small-scale wind case study here.

The challenge now is keeping this momentum up. As families get wealthier, the status quo is changing, and middle class families’ expectations are turning to energy supplied by fossil fuels. Rather than using an improved cook stove, such as the Anagi II model, kerosene is in vogue.

“We already use renewable energy in this country, and our struggle will be to keep it. Now only poor people use it, or economically disadvantaged people, but if we can make it very hot, or very stylish, if we can do something so that the poor people don’t feel like they are disadvantaged because they are using renewable energy. It is at that scale that we need it.”

Changing attitudes is certainly a tough one, and the need to do so pops up in some unexpected contexts. On our way from Kandy to Colombo for example, we stopped to chat with a lady called Chandrawathi who was cooking corn on a very smoky stove made out of an old oil drum for her roadside business. When we got back in the car, we learnt that sellers such as Chandrawathi were reluctant to use improved cook stoves as they didn’t produce smoke. For hungry drivers, smoky stoves means that food is freshly cooked, and so better stoves may mean less wood use and less smoke in your lungs, but it won’t sell corn.

Making sustainable energy choices is definitely not plain sailing, but it is influenced by government policy, and this is what the PISCES project is trying to do. By taking lessons from the success of the Anagi II cook stove, which is now used in hundreds of thousands of households across Sri Lanka (but not yet, as we have learnt, at roadside stalls), PISCES is now working on national clean cook stove standards, meaning more efficient, cleaner burning stoves for more people. Now that, Professor Shanthini might say, would be green hot!

Kilns in Kandy Could be Cleaner!

katiewelford
Kandy, Sri Lanka, Kandy
October 31st, 2011

I have just got back from a really interesting 2 weeks in Sri Lanka where I got a snapshot into the experiences of small- and large-scale businesses who use bioenergy efficiently and sustainably. And also some not so efficiently…

The lush green surroundings of Kandy have given way to a quarried valley and air misty with smoke. It catches your breath as you climb out of the car, and gets right into your nose and lungs. This is Digana, about 15km from Kandy, Sri Lanka, where a number of small, family-run limekilns line the valley.

Upali, a jovial 65-year old, has lived here all his life, and his father ran this operation before him. Fifty metres behind Upali’s house, a shirtless man steadily piles up lumps of limestone that have been blown off the rock face by dynamite. It is late in the afternoon but still hot, and this is certainly backbreaking and dangerous work.

Once broken down into smaller lumps the limestone is put through a grinder, then taken over to the kilns. Standing about 3 metres high, the limestone is fed into the top along with large lumps of wood that are burned to provide the heat. It takes two days for the limestone to pass from the top to the bottom of the kiln, which requires a continuous stream of energy. This process is essential to prepare the limestone to be used in cement mix. It is also used as a basic whitewash for walls, and is mixed with the Arica nut and chewed as a mild narcotic.

The process is hugely inefficient, and produces thick smoke from the wood, explaining the town’s air quality. Alongside the terrible health effects of breathing smoke like this on a daily basis, it is also not good for business. The wood cannot be sourced locally, and just one log costs around $0.6. Burning methods such as this account for deforestation on a wide scale, and the returns are slim, with Upali earning just $0.25 per KG of limestone produced.

The challenge presented here is complex. Upali learnt this trade from his Father, and not much has changed about this process in the 65-years he has been living here. Adapting mind sets to newer, more efficient ways of doing things requires a sensitive approach that may take some time, and local buy-in is essential.

Another huge barrier is the cost. Installing a modern kiln would be far more efficient, but the initial price is high. Without funding avenues such as microfinance loans and reasonable repayments, people such as Upali simply don’t have the savings to make the investment.

Read more about Practical Action’s work to tackle energy poverty here: http://practicalaction.org/energy-poverty. Upali is exactly who could benefit from increased knowledge, skills, financing and political commitment to energy, so that he can access clean, efficient and sustainable energy that will benefit both his health and his pocket. I was in Sri Lanka as part of the PISCES project, which is generating new research on sustainable and affordable bioenergy use, and is working to influence policy change in East Africa and South Asia, visit www.pisces.or.ke.

Sri Lanka floods

Paul Smith Lomas
January 20th, 2011

The situation in Sri Lanka is very worrying. A few years ago, flooding affecting 300,000 people might have captured the headlines, but these days it feels like this is just business as usual. I had the impression that the reports on Sri Lanka tended to get coverage only because it was one of three countries (Australia, Brazil, and Sri Lanka) all badly affected by exceptional rains.

On the ground of course, whether you’re part of a group of 300 or 300,000 people affected, it can be a truly devastating experience. I have spent time in flooded areas of Bangladesh, and India before now, and the way people cope can be quite amazing.

Practical Action has been working in Kathiravely and Kalmadu where some 150 families are still living in relief camps set up and run by the Government, unable to return home yet. We’re not a relief agency, and are not set up with the kind of logistical capacities to buy and distribute the large amounts of food, blankets, soap and cleaning items that people need today. However, a number of our partners are engaged and we’re helping them where we can.

Soon we will be turning our heads to the task of rebuilding water tanks and flood bunds, and here I am hopeful we can ensure people are aware of the techniques we’ve developed, so structures will be able to withstand future flooding when it occurs. Unfortunately, it does seem that it’s a question of when, not if.

Environment, lagoons and Sri Lanka

Margaret Gardner
Rathgama Lake, CGHW Hwy, Sri Lanka, Southern Asia
November 9th, 2010

Fishing is a traditional livelihood in Sri Lanka but while sea fishing post-Tsunami has had much support, little has been done to help the communities dependant on lagoons.

Today I spoke with one lagoon community desperately trying to protect their precious environment and maintain their way of life.

The problem goes back to the Tsunami and the push after such devastation to ‘get things done’. Two of the things that ‘got done’ in Rathgama were a temporary harbour that has now become pretty permanent and a new road bridge built to replace one that was destroyed. Both of these new structures blocked the flow of water in and out of the lagoon and caused dramatic environmental degradation. Because of this the chemical processes that affect the lagoon have been changed, resulting in decreased oxygen, dead fish, and dramatically increased weed. A separate impact has been the silting up of the lagoon as debris is no longer able to escape. In essence the lagoon is dying.

The 500 families dependant on fishing in the lagoon are desperate to protect it, not just because it provides their income but also because they care deeply.

I asked them why they didn’t protest when the original building was planned. The Chair of the group replied: “We told the harbour captain, we told the engineer. People kept saying there are no lagoon fishermen – we were ignored totally.”

The lagoon is incredibly beautiful and for just one moment I was reminded of Avatar and the battle to save Pandora. These people are in a battle to save their environment, but maybe to compare it to a film is to cheapen their efforts.

Practical Action has been working with the community for a year. Originally we came to help develop boat repair skills and to provide training on net-making, but we soon realised that the issue was much bigger. We worked with the community to get others to listen to their problems, to recognise them. We found a ‘lost’ report that said the bridge and the harbour should both be built differently so as to protect the lagoon. We conducted an engineering survey that identified what needed to be done to put everything right, and we built the confidence of the community to argue for their cause. We also stood alongside and supported them.

This was so nearly a happy ending. In May the government recognised the problem and the necessity of protecting the lagoon biodiversity. They heard what the villagers had to say and allocated money to put everything right … but then local politics got in the way. No one knows why – now even the sea-fishers say the harbour was built in the wrong place and they want it changed. And today the bridge built after the Tsunami looks to be poor quality, and it’s obvious that some of the supports have given way.

It’s is a real battle against the odds – we need to understand who is the hidden ‘villain’ and how can we influence. We also need to work with no or little money, as Practical Action’s funds to work with this community have now run out – yet as I saw today we are still doing what we can.

Above all we need to work urgently to use our skills, our technologies and the community’s enthusiasm and commitment to save this lagoon from destruction. It is beautiful, it’s part of our fight to protect the biodiversity of our planet and it’s about poor people – 500 fisher families, women who work coir and beyond this the farmers who grow rice, whose land is increasingly saline and therefore much more difficult to successfully cultivate.

This may sound like pie in the sky but I want to tell you that in Sri Lanka we have solved similar problem

South Asia Disaster Report

I am Ramona from Practical Action South Asia, and I want to share some news that we are excited about.

The South Asia Disaster Report 2010 – Changing Climates, Impeding Risks, Emerging Perspectives was launched today at the Asian Ministerial Conference on Disaster Risk Reduction being held in South Korea.  Vishaka and Buddika are there representing both Practical Action and Duryog Nivaran.

Since the conference began on Tuesday, we have been making three presentations each day and are very much visible there, which is a great achievement for us.  The schedule gives an idea of our presence.

From the conference, Buddika says:

SADR 2010 was successfully launched today at the High Level Round Table 03 of the 4th Asian Ministerial Conference.  First copy was handed over to the Home Minister of Government of India by Vishaka.  Well done everyone.

Vishaka says:

We launced SADR at the beginning of High Level.  We felt that it went well.  The Indian Minister who chaired the session introduced it.  At least twenty Ministers if not more, including Fowzie from Sri Lanka was present.  I only spoke a few words and highlighted the practical framework and tools in it.

I know our work is not complete yet, but it felt good.  Thanks a lot for all those who worked hard to make this happen.  I was hoping some of you were watching the webcast.  When I showed it to Jerry (the UNISDR Senior Regional Coordinator for the Asia-Pacific), he said “you do beautiful covers” to which I said that “we do good inside too”.  He then requested that we include ALF (Adaptive Livelihoods Framework that SADR introduces) to the road map that is being launched by the Ministerial meeting and its action plan.  We did that.

Buddika showed me Minister Fowzie’s statement at the High level which mentions Practical Actions work with the government.  Mr Chandradasa at the SAARC session also mentioned us.  In many sessions we were highlighted as a key author of APDR (Asia Pacific Disaster Report) which was launched yesterday evening.  So although our team here is small (compared to others like IFRC, ADPC, Plan etc) we seem to have managed to be seen in many places.

One more day to to and two presentations to prepare!!

Sustainable energy in action

Practical Action is participating at the Vidulka exhibition organized by the Sustainable Energy Authority and the Ministry of Power and Energy of Sri Lanka.

The Vidulka exhibition was part of the energy week programme declared by the Ministry of Power and Energy from 3rd to 8th of August 2010.

Practical Action’s stall had many exciting features that attracted VIPs such as the Minister of Power & Energy, many key government department heads, academics and many others from the renewable energy sector.

Some of the interesting features in our stall include:

• actual models of renewable energy technologies such as the Bio Mass Cook Stove
• human-powered bicycle and exercise machine that can generate power
• domestic water pump & bio diesel processing
• mini book store on renewable energy
• renewable energy information from the net

The official media sponsor of the programme Sri Lanka Rupvahaini Corporation team featured the Practical Action stall today at 11 am.

More about Practical Action South Asia.