Banished for felling

Saturday 17th December, 2022

The need to protect trees has come to be felt more than ever across the world owing to rising temperatures and the frighteningly high levels of air pollution. Needless to say, they are an effective defence against the ill-effects of climate change/emergency. Their destruction, be it in forests or elsewhere, is an environmental crime, but sadly it is not treated as such in most cases, and the perpetrators thereof are not made to face the full force of the law.

The UN Environment Programme says research has shown that a forest cover the size of Portugal is ripped from the earth each year, driving climate change and a host of other environmental crises, including wildfires, species extinction, and food insecurity. It has revealed that during the past 30 years, 420 million hectares of forest have been lost through conversion to other land use––it is larger than the size of India––and that another 100 million hectares are at risk. The situation is so bad that more than 100 world leaders, who gathered at the COP26 UN Climate Change Conference, last year, pledged to end and reverse deforestation by 2030 and make available USD 19.2 billion for that purpose. They have reaffirmed their commitment, this year, as well. Whether meaningful follow-up action is being taken to ensure that the ambitious goal they have set for themselves will be achieved may be in doubt, but there has been a discernible awakening of public concern about the environment, especially forests, the world over. Some countries have introduced tougher laws to protect trees and forests and taken action to ensure the strict enforcement of the existing ones. One such instance has been reported from the UK.

A British man who cut down several trees over a boundary line row, last year, and turned aggressive towards his neighbours, has got the shock of his life, and deservedly so. A court has found him guilty of criminal damage, among other things, and banned him from entering his village, Blisworth, for 15 years! He is now 59 and the ban will be effective until he is 74! He has also been ordered not to contact his victims in any way, and handed a six-month prison term suspended for one and a half years. Harsh as this penalty may look, it is welcome in that it is sure to have a deterrent effect on all others who are inclined to destroy trees.

The landmark judgment reported from the UK provides food for thought, and the need for such stringent measures to tackle the destruction of trees and forests in this country cannot be overstated. Hardly a day passes here without instances of forest destruction being reported. Sri Lanka’s forest cover has shrunk from 70% at the beginning of the 19th Century to 28.39% at present, according to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization data. Despite this alarming trend, the present-day rulers have removed the peripheral or ‘other’ forests from the purview of the Forest Department and placed them under District and Divisional Secretaries so that their henchmen could grab parts thereof on the pretext of boosting national food production. Government politicians and their backers are having a field day at the expense of the precious, fast-receding forest cover thanks to the malleability of public administrators who lack expertise in forest conservation. President Gotabaya Rajapaksa, under whose stewardship, the ‘other forests’ were exposed to danger, has been ousted, albeit for a different reason, but those who believe in forest deities might claim that it was divine punishment for his contribution to the destruction of the leafy giants.

Judicial activism is a sine qua non for protecting a country against crimes such as environmental destruction, and one can only hope that the Sri Lankan judiciary will take a leaf out of the book of the British judge who banished the above-mentioned British man from his roots, as it were, as punishment for the wanton destruction of trees, etc. We suggest that the destroyers of trees and forests be banished from the country, which will be a much better place without them.