Effectiveness of Existing Laws and Regulations to Prevent Encroachments of Stream Reservations

Abstract

Sri Lanka, with more than 2500 years of hydraulic civilization, has constructed highly complex systems of irrigation in the Dry Zone. Kings formulated the rules in consultation with high officials in the Kings' court. The King was the source of the laws. This ancient administrative system gradually changed after colonization and attention focused more on written rules and regulations of the government legislations than those based on customs, norms, and traditions of Sri Lanka. There are more than 50 legislations enacted in relation to the development and management of water resources along with the establishment of a large number of institutions. Despite all these, water resources are being degraded at an alarming rate. A preliminary study showed that there were adequate legal mechanisms and institutions to prevent water resources degradation. This study was carried out to determine the effectiveness of regulations and associated institutional arrangements to prevent stream encroachments. Two villages between Peradeniya and Gampola along the Mahaweli river were selected for the study. Questionnaire surveys, focus group discussions among institutional officers and interviews were conducted in these villages. The results showed that the existing regulatory mechanisms to protect stream reservation covered all aspects including eviction of encroachers. However, there are serious deficiencies in implementation of such regulations such as the lack of coordination among institutions, procedural lapses, political interference, and less enthusiasm of state employees to implement rules and regulations. The encroachers tend to occupy the reservations due to landlessness, poverty, and the social cohesion among their own communities.

Challenges in Biodiversity Conservation in a Highly Modified Tropical River Basin in Sri Lanka

“…Although there are some 20 governmental agencies and over 50 legal instruments regulating aquatic resources in Sri Lanka, lack of proper coordination among these agencies have weakened the effective enforcement (Table 2) [54,57,[69][70][71][72][73]. Conflicting interests among some regulatory statutes-for instance, Land Reclamation and Development Cooperation Act versus National Policy on Wetlands-further contribute to policy dissociations.…”

“…Even recent legislation is not explicit with regard to integrated river basin management and do not effectively harness novel conservation designs. While mandatory streamside reservations (20-60 m) [36] are often overshadowed by short-term economic goals, the ecological reasoning for these buffer widths remain unjustified [71]. Furthermore, although Sri Lanka is a signatory to many international conventions (Ramsar Convention and UN Waters), current policies have not drawn insights from such international collaborations.…”

“…Nonetheless, the scientific reasoning behind Sri Lanka's existing policies and law execution are weak or nonexistent. A dearth of biologists has afflicted the Sri Lankan environmental agencies for decades, and consequently, existing Sri Lankan environmental policies failed to meet scientific rigor [57,71,72]. Therefore, biologists specialized across multiple subdisciplines (wildlife biologists, conservation biologists, freshwater and wetland ecologists, landscape ecologists, ecosystem ecologists, environmental pathologists, and epidemiologists) should be involved at the decision-making level.…”

Constructing the ‘legalities’ of encroachments in dam, canal, and stream reservations in the north-central province of Sri Lanka

“…There are three main reasons for this selection. Firstly; the north-central province is considered to be the heart of Sri Lanka's irrigated-agriculture network (and has been considered in this way, for several centuries) that houses the centrepieces of hydraulic infrastructure (De Silva 1981) including some of the most notable dams and reservoirs (Azmi 2007;Chandrasekara and Gunawardena 2011). Secondly, the north-central province of Sri Lanka has been the subject of large scale water engineering projects (for example the Mahaweli Development Programme, which is documented as the largest national development project ever to be undertaken in the country) that sought to improve the province's hydraulic network to maximize agricultural production (Mendis 1973;Azmi 2007).…”

“…In short, while aspects of the material world may exist outside of discourses; we cannot understand them from outside our own perspective(s) or discourses. This is an assertion that acts as a theoretical nucleus particularly for discourse analysis, and more generally for the episteme of social constructionism and phenomenology (Burr 2015;Miller 2017).…”