Red listed!

Thursday, 20 December 2012 00:00 - - {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}

AROUND 200 endemic plants of Sri Lanka are prone to extinction, while 72 plant species have already disappeared, the newly-issued report on Sri Lanka’s Flora and Fauna reveals, putting fresh onus on the need to protect the environment.

It is estimated that the world’s forests are a mega storage of 2,400 gigatons of carbon accounting for half the terrestrial carbon pool. Destruction of these forests can emit this carbon into the atmosphere in the form of Green House Gases such as carbon dioxide or kill the opportunity to keep the gases trapped, fuelling global warming that ultimately leads to climate change. Deforestation is already found to be responsible for 20% of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions, more than the entire global transportation sector and second only to the energy sector.

Deforestation is one of the most serious environmental issues in Sri Lanka. In the 1920s, the island had a 49 per cent forest cover but by 2005 this had fallen by approximately 20 per cent. Between 1990 and 2000, Sri Lanka lost an average of 26,800 ha of forests per year. Little effective monitoring of deforestation and the intense sensitivity of it also keeps the issue in the shadows.

The National Red List of Flora and Fauna of Sri Lanka 2012 contains a total of 2,264 evaluated fauna species, including 936 endemics and 3,492 evaluated flora species including 943 endemics. The 2012 Red List has included lesser known faunal groups such as the dung beetles, corals, echinoderms, centipedes, marine fish, bivalves and gastropods to spark the interest among students and scientists to explore the new areas of study.

Yet, the looming threat of deforestation grows ever stronger. The forests in Sri Lanka have been removed to make way for agricultural land and plantations and to provide fuel and timber. The sale of timber is a part of the national economy to raise revenue. The country is a major producer of tea and the land required for tea plantations is substantial. Population pressure is also a significant factor as is the removal of forested areas to make way for irrigation networks, which was a major process in the 1980s.

Since the end of the war, a massive development drive has also put many vulnerable ecological sites under pressure. Unsustainable economic practices have pushed the weather into erratic patterns with harsh droughts being followed by floods, often destroying precious harvests. Sri Lanka still has its largest employee base in agriculture, which means that the poor are often the hardest hit by climate changes born from deforestation.

Sri Lanka was hard hit by floods in early 2011, drought in mid-2012, and is presently in the middle of torrential rains that have killed 16 people and displaced thousands. Such events underscore the importance of finding ways to deal with environmental challenges as more countries battle for development in the world of diminishing resources.

The World Bank in a recent report, quite to the amusement of environmentalists, sounded alarm bells over rapid climate change, with estimates that touched a four degree Celsius increase by as early as 2050. Conversely, it has yet to roll back on its funding of coal power plants, mirroring the conflict that is faced by the entire world.