Features
Impact of new technology on 13A conundrum, climate and biodiversity catastrophes
by Chandre Dharmawardana
chandre.dharma@yahoo.ca
Sri Lanka has celebrated its 75th independence anniversary. Its president Wickremesinghe has taken matters into his hands with unprecedented assertiveness. Perhaps, he senses his last chance, and wishes to solve as many problems as he can, before he leaves. A bankrupt economy, shortages of food, energy, and medical supplies, compounded by distrust among ethnic groups are on his plate. But Wickremasinghe has ignored economic problems and turned to constitutional initiatives like the 13th amendment of the Gandhi-JRJ era, while risking re-kindling of partly dormant ethnic fires. He has also ignored the climate and economic summits weakened by war.
Getting ready for extreme climate eventualities
Two Climate summits (COP27 and COP17) in 2022, and the recent World Economic Forum (WEF) at Davos raised red-banners regarding climate catastrophes, an uninhabitable earth, rapid declines in biodiversity and the free fall in the numbers of pollinating insects vital to the food supply. The poorest countries would suffer most although least guilty of the consumerism that has unleashed these catastrophes.
Even though Sri Lanka was short of forex, delegations went to all those summits and returned. President Wickremasinghe even suggested a Climate University for Sri Lanka! Will it teach environmental science to the 225 MPs, elucidating Sri Lanka’s vulnerability?
A tropical island like Sri Lanka is particularly vulnerable, facing global warming, sea level rise, loss of biodiversity, irregular monsoons, increasing freak floods and droughts, invasions of harmful locusts, insects, parasites and viruses responding to new warmer climate patterns?
A country must have a robust energy supply and a well-secured food supply to cope with such adversity. Lanka’s agricultural outputs have [1], more than 43% of children under five suffer from malnutrition [2] while government hospitals have run out of resources.
Potential submersion of the North and East.
The Tsunami of December 2004 reminds us how the North and Eastern coastal areas, as well as the Southern coast went under sea. Global warming and a warm sea will destroy the underground fresh water bubble sitting on sea water that nourishes the Northern peninsula. Changes in specific gravity, convection currents and release of trapped gases work inexorably. The limestone land and connecting causeways will fail and create a new submerged “Mahabalipuram” or “Kumari-kandam” within a few decades.
The Muslims and Sinhalese ejected during ethnic cleansing of the North by the Tigers, and denied of their lands should not show schadenfreude at the plight of northern Tamils facing rising seas, because those who will suffer are not the warring leaders, but innocents too poor to escape to the south or to other lands.
The one constitutional amendment that is sorely needed to save them and the North is NOT on the table!
COP27 had promised funding for mitigating expected climate damage. An over-arching authority covering areas threatened by sea level rise is needed. The Mahaweli authority provides an archetype that overrides parochial boundaries to cover the whole ecosystem. A climate authority needs to build dykes, mangrove shields, etc., while integrating sea-weed farming, fishery, elevated roadways, agriculture and energy generation. We discussed these in the The Island, Sept-30, 2017, while an extended version is at Researchgate [3].
Constitution makers incorporating a climate authority must also recognise that the elections model has failed even in the UK and USA, with corrupt politicians setting up corrupt oligarchic rule. A widely considered way out is the sortition model where a sizable fraction of the legislators is elected by lottery from politically non-affiliated citizens to serve just one term. We discussed this in the Sri Lankan context (The Island, January, 2, 2023), while the Harvard Political Review [4] has recently discussed its relevance to USA.
Aspirations of Minorities
Political and constitutional methods of resolving language-rights, and providing local government by local politicians while keeping the centre happy have always failed and a 30-year war was fought. However, eminently practical and inexpensive technological solutions have become available during the 36 years since the introduction of 13A in 1987.
Language rights
According to Tiranagama (The Island 28-07-20), Sinhala and Tamil are the official national languages; Tamil, the language of the main minority is official in all 9 provinces. Sinhala, the language of the majority is official only in seven provinces! Sinhalese police officers and public servants fail to communicate in Tamil, and vice versa. Consequently, citizens are not served in their own language. Furthermore, smaller minorities, e.g., the Malays, and their language rights are completely ignored.
Technology can right these wrongs
Google translate, ChatGP, and new AI technologies provide seamless trans-speech to anyone across over 200 languages. Open-source modular AI speech transcription, e.g., “Whisper” beat humans in comprehending speech ambiguities and rendering into a target language. James Somers, writing in the New Yorker claims [5] that what sounds like “Can you crane a Ford?” is correctly understood as “Can Ukraine afford” by “Whisper”.
Cell phones are cheap, and computer-literate Lankans can utilise these technologies to create Apps to bring true parity to Sinhala, Tamil and other language. You speak your lingo to your phone and your listener hears it in his/her language and local accent! AI provides an end to the language strife of the past.
Local government
The costs of solar energy, batteries and electric locomotion are falling steeply. US-style highways cater to private transport powered mainly by polluting fossil fuels. Highways cost far more than public transport using fast electric trains.
If Jaffna and Colombo were veritable suburbs connected by fast trains, 13A becomes an irrelevant anachronism. Wigneswaran can have breakfast at 8 am in Colombo, and easily meet Jaffna citizens living 300 km away well before lunch!
High speed electric trains plying at 300 km/h are now quite common, while the Shanghai-Maglev train runs at 460 km/h!
Food and energy security
A small nation facing troubled times needs secure sources of energy and food produced using climate-friendly methods that conserve biodiversity. Agriculture contributes over 1/3 of the noxious greenhouse gases (GHG) that cause global warming, while fossil fuels, industry and warfare contribute the rest.
Unfortunately, climate summits and the WEF have become hostages of the oil-lobby and politically powerful Eco-extremists who dominate the EU. Consequently the resolutions of these summits, while recognising climate dangers, provide NO useful solutions. Thus the [6] – a prime example of [7] similar to those tried out and failed in Sri Lanka – were reiterated at COP27 and Davos by EU President Ursula von der Leyen.
The EU Green Deal embraces “organic agriculture (OA)” , redubbed “regenerative”, and promises 55% reduced GHG emissions by 2030 – an impossibility, having reneged the very tools for GHG reduction, namely, no-till farming, agrochemicals, modern seeds and gene technology. Organic agriculture strongly boosts GHG emissions through intense tillage, waterlogging of land for weed control, and composting for fertiliser, making a mockery of climate and biodiversity conservation efforts.
Sri Lanka has learnt its lesson, and planners must follow agricultural scientists and expel political monks and pseudo-ecologists who tout outdated technologies and ancient seeds in the name of tradition. The canard that ‘traditional rice varieties have immense nutritional benefits” must be rectified [8].
Energy self-sufficiency
Self-sufficiency in clean energy is eminently achievable for Sri Lanka. It has one of the highest densities of aquatic bodies per hectare, a string of hydroelectric reservoirs and a national grid linking the land. US National Renewable Energy Lab in Colorado has studied Sri Lanka and Maldives and noted Lanka’s good potential for solar-energy.
In 2009 we proposed [9] that all reservoirs be equipped with floating solar panels, not only to generate electricity, but also to prevent water evaporation, automatically increasing hydro-electricity by some 30%. This boost is NOT subject to fluctuations due to changing cloud cover.
On the other hand, the electricity generated using wind or solar panels IS subject to such fluctuations, at ANY GIVEN LOCALITY. This “fickle” nature of solar- and wind- electricity has been used by the CEB engineers and some academics to discredit them as viable options for Sri Lanka. They have touted coal and LNG, utterly disregarding forex costs and environmental unsuitability.
In reality, when solar and wind energies are generated in MANY localities, and then saved in batteries or as head-water in reservoirs, then no fluctuation effects will be felt by the grid. The idling batteries of electric vehicles parked during the day can store Solar by V2G (vehicle-to-grid) plug-ins. The forex cost for such energy development is orders of magnitude cheaper and cleaner than for LNG and other touted solutions.
The potential from bio-energy, e.g., using castor seed for diesel oil [10], exploiting the ease of rapidly growing Castor could be exploited to provide a secure panoply of clean inexpensive energies for Sri Lanka.
Relevant basic ideas were laid out in 2009 [9] and at least some pilot projects were appropriate. The nay-sayers won the day and Sri Lanka is starved of energy. Even today 100% conversion to renewable energy that does not need Forex is possible within a decade for Sri Lanka.
So, proposals to drill for oil in the Mannar basin, or unsolicited offers to set up nuclear power to solve Lanka’s energy problems should generally be rejected as undesirable and unnecessary
Conclusion.
The three major problems facing Sri Lanka, namely (a) linguistic and local-government rights of minorities (b) energy and food security, (c) mitigating global warming effects, have all changed their character since the 1980s. These now have clear technological solutions.
References:
[1]https://economynext.com/sri-lanka-maha-2021-rice-harvest-drop-40-pct-due-to-fertilizer-ban-95750/
[2]https://island.lk/childhood-malnutrition-the-double-edged-sword/
[3]https://www.researchgate.net/publication/320258350_A_Tenth_province_or_Coastal_authority_to_deal_with_climate_change_A_must_for_a_21_st_century_constitution_of_Sri_Lanka
[4]https://harvardpolitics.com/sortition-in-america/
[5]https://www.newyorker.com/tech/annals-of-technology/whispers-of-ais-modular-future
[6]https://commission.europa.eu/strategy-and-policy/priorities-2019-2024/european-green-deal_en
[7]https://www.realclearmarkets.com/articles/2023/01/05/the_us_must_learn_from_sri_lankas_green_policy_mistakes_873852.html
[8]https://www.lankaweb.com/news/items/2023/01/30/paddy-farming-organic-versus-agrochemical-based-methods/
[9]https://dh-web.org/place.names/posts/dev-tech-2009.ppt
[10]https://island.lk/can-castor-beanrubber-and-tea-seeds-solve-sri-lankas-diesel-deficit/