The recent Appeal decision on Upper Kotmale Hydro Power Project (UKHP) by the Secretary to the Ministry of Forest and Environment shows the crisis of the Environmental Impact Assessment process (EIA) in Sri Lanka. The project proposed by the Ceylon Electricity Board was rejected by the CEA twice and the Appeal heard by then Secretary to the Ministry of Transport, Environment and Women's Affairs also rejected the proposal. The recent decision of the Secretary to approve the project is not based on any scientific or legal justification. Launching of many industrial estates and highways without any approval shows the depth of the crisis. The Secretary who has the mandate to take the ultimate decision has himself criticised this process in several forums. We also learnt that now the Ministry is not backing the EIA process.

Millions of US dollars have flowed to the Sri Lankan Authorities to enhance the Environment Impact Assessment process for new development activities through a joint project of the Sri Lanka Government and the US Government through USAID which was called Natural Resources and Environmental Policy Project (NAREPP). Several other donors also provided funds for EIA process. At present the process is backed by the Institutional Strengthening for Environmental Assessment (ISEA) project which is funded by the Asian Development Bank, but it will also wind up soon.

NAREPP was a six year project (1991-1996), a cooperative effort of the Government of Sri Lanka and the United states which was coordinated by then Ministry of Transport, Environment and Women's Affairs (MTEWA) and the US Agency for International Development (USAID). USAID provided US $ 25 million and GOSL provide US$ 6 Million for this project. Meetings, workshops, seminars, training, model analysis, research reports, and foreign trips, consultations, pilot projects were familiar features in the project. We are not very familiar with the roll of ISEA project but the only fact we know is that International resources Group which is a US based consultancy group is the main consultant for both NAREPP and ISEA projects. Over 500 people are serving in various places who are qualified on EIA process Unfortunately the credibility of the process is now seriously eroded and a crisis has arisen due to various reasons and the idea of this assessment is to advocate the relevant personnel to address the issues well before it loses direction.

Provisions for EIA were included to the NEA in 1988 and it took 5 years to gazettes the regulations to make this process moving. Since then hundreds of IEES and EIAs were processed through this process. Many of them were approved with conditions and a few projects were rejected. Over 70 projects are in the preparation stage awaiting a decision at the moment. The purpose of an Environmental Impact assessment is to ensure that development options under consideration are environmentally sound and sustainable and that environmental consequences are recognized and taken into account early on in projects design stage. EIAs are intended to foster sound decision making, not to generate more paper work or to delay projects.

Participatory Process
The EIA process is the most participatory process in Sri Lanka. Though the Government assured more participation and transparency, it did not happen in other sectors while many of the politicians started criticizing the EIA process and blamed it for sabotaging development. Many of the politicians and industrialists see this process in a negative way. Many political projects such as the majority of the industrial parks, Colombo-Matara super highway and many hotel project started of without even doing an EIA, not to mention due approval.

When new development projects come which are called prescribed projects approval should be obtained after the preparation of an Environmental Impact Assessment. This should be open for the public for a period of 30 days and then Project Approving Agency (PAA) has to consider such comments and approve or reject the project. 'Adoption of EIA as a legal requirement, however has several policy and interactive implications. These are largely due to institutional weaknesses, lack of trained human resources, scant baseline information and the high cost of generating primary data. As in many other developing countries the adoption of the EIA has resulted in problems ranging from the incomplete EIA reports to an increase in corruption. It is feared that the EIA will lose its quality and get merely reduced to a summery issuance to a no objection certificate.

Credibility Crisis
According to the proceedings of the South and South East Asian regional training workshop of SEA (18-20 Sep. 1997) 'Recognizing the usefulness of EIA, many South Asian countries have worked to establish appropriate institutional and legislative frameworks for the effective implementation of EIA. Although encouraging signs of skill development are one evident in the public and private sectors, South Asian countries are still facing difficulties in implementing EIA procedures. Lack of adequate human, technical and financial resources and inadequate institutional frameworks are identified as frameworks to effective EIA implementation. Weak environmental management capacity has translated into following situation in South Asia:

* A low standard of environmental assessment and documentation.

* Inadequate environmental analysis to excuse projects, programs, and policies.

* An incomplete transfer of international knowledge and experience from expatriates to South Asia.

* Absence of a system of public participation in EIA implementation.

* Absence of a system of accessing EIA related information because of undefined responsibilities of implementing agencies.

* Lack of skilled human resources at the technical, administrative, managerial and policy making levels.

* Lack of complete, accurate, and reliable environmental data.

*Absence of a monitoring and evaluation system to implement the recommendations of EIA.

* Absence of linkages and networks among and between the EIA professionals and institutions resulting into poor exchange of experiences.

* Absence of a provision for strict monitoring and evaluation of project implementation in the prevailing rules and regulations.

*Absence of a follow up on EIA after project authorization.

A complete integration of EIA into a project cycle has not yet taken place to demonstrate the benefits of EIA implementation in South Asia. Many development planners, proponents, administrators, and politicians have begun to question the viability of EIA application and have criticized it as begin inappropriate of the developing world. following are some of the common concerns.

*EIA is too expensive

* EIA is just an ad-hoc measure that comes too late to do any good

* EIA delays the project

*EIA is too complex

* EIA does not produce useful results

* EIA is misused and slows economic development, and developing countries are too poor to afford EIA.

Weak Implementation
The Central Environmental Authority is the main implementation agency for the EIA regulations. Line Ministries have to operate their own EIA Cells. Unfortunately most of the EIA Cells as well as the EIA handling units of the CEA have not shown much improvements compared to the money flowed in. The weak implementation of the EIA process within the last 5 years is the main reason for the credibility crisis.

Though there are more than 500 trained personnel in Sri Lanka, most of them are not handling the EIAs. Even though the personnel who handle the EIAs have limited experience and cannot be creative due to the political and industrial lobbies who exert pressure.

Normally a scoping session should be transparent and public should be able to participate. But out of the more than 500 scoping sessions a handful got public to participate.

Once the Ministry of Industries put a cabinet memorandum to reduce the 30 day public commenting period to 14 days. This was later revamped due to the public pressure. Again the President of Sri Lanka issued a gazette to suspend all the environmental statues under the emergency law relating to energy sector and some NGOs vehemently opposed this and later it was withdrawn.

Public Participation
Public participation is not welcomed by many EIA Cells, Industrialists and the politicians who believe that public comments always sabotage the projects.

They also believe the 30 day public commenting period is the only reason for the delay of projects. The recent amendment now at the cabinet level to remove the 30 day public commenting period from the IEES is very good example of this attitude.

Unfortunately public do not properly participate in this decision making process. Many EIAs and IEEs have received only one or two comments from the public. There are many reason for this but is mainly due to the lack of awareness of this right. Most of them are not aware how, why and when they can participate this process. In addition the public do not have much confidence about the closed process after they send their comments. They are not sure whether the comment made by them have been taken into consideration.

EIA Training
There was a time that EIA professionals, both local and foreign, changed there bags from one hotel to another.

Continued tomorrow

I managed not to write about Princess Diana on the first anniversary of her death a few weeks ago - after all, she hasn't done much that's newsworthy in the past year - but you just can't get away from the topic of fame. Which, of course, inevitably leads the conversation straight back to you-know-who.

It started at dinner, with Kate, my 6-year-old, asking what we meant by saying that someone was a 'legend'. I said that it was a famous person who stayed famous after they died - which started an argument about whether there could really be a 'living legend'.

Sure, said her mother, there are lots of them. Bob Dylan, for example - whereupon the 15-year-old asked who Bob Dylan was.

He wrote lots of songs that you've heard, Tina said. 'Blowing in the Wind', for example.

'Gone with the Wind'? Melissa replied. No, that's a book and a film, not a song, I said.

Well, is it that song about Princess Diana? Melissa asked. No, that's 'Candle in the Wind', I said - and added: The song was originally about Marilyn Monroe. She's a legend, too.

The point being that we are overrun with legends.

The average person now recognises the names and faces of many more 'famous' people whom they have never met than real people whom they actually know. And this is surely an historical first.

If you doubt me, try this experiment. Just keep track of how many people die in the next week or two that you have heard of. Not just mega-stars like Frank Sinatra, but anyone whose face and name you recognise. You'll find that there are at least a couple a week.

A hundred
Two people per week is a hundred a year. At least one hundred people you have never met but nevertheless know something about - actors and actressess, sports stars, politicians, business people, musicians and singers - are dying each year. You see it on the television or read it in the paper, and generally pass on dry-eyed.

The famous
In the very same month that Diana died, Mother Theresa passed away in Calcutta. General Mobutu, ex-dictator of Zaire, died, as did American pop artist Roy Lichtenstein, and Professor Hans Eysenck, whose views on race and intelligence were widely condemned as racist. That's an average of more than one person dying per week whose fame is international. Add in the deaths of all those who are only famous in the country or city where you live, and the number climbs very steeply indeed - to at least a dozen a month.

Even counting people whom you met once and barely remember, nothing like one hundred people whom you actually know die each year. You 'know' at least ten times as many people by their fame as you know in your real life.

The number of people you know well enough to have a brief conversation when you meet is a remarkably stable figure: between 140 and 200 people. Hermits know fewer people, insurance salesmen and politicians know more, but unless some professional deformation skews the total, the number of names in your address book will stay about the same as the maximum size of a hunting-and-gathering band.

Well, obviously. Human beings evolved in hunting-and-gathering bands, and spent 99 percent of our history living in groups of that size. We are programmed to deal with around 140-200 relationships - - some close, many more casual - because what held those groups together was a dense network of social ties.

These are very large numbers for our sort of primates, by the way.

Chimpanzees. our nearest relatives, cannot handle more than about seventy relationships, and their bands split in two if they grow beyond that number.

Secret weapon
Our secret weapon was speech, which gave us a low-cost way to maintain a large number of social ties while getting on with our lives. (You can't do anything else while you're servicing a relationship by picking nits out of your neighbour's fur).

There are even those who argue that the very large size of human bands was a key factor in starting us down the road to global domination.

But now we have grown to average 'band sizes' in the millions. There is no way to know so many people: personal ties cannot hold the group together. For the first five thousand years of civilisation we solved the problems of cohesion and cooperation with force: all early mass societies were tyrannies that you could not leave.

But now most of us live in democracies. Mass media, starting with books and newspapers and ending with television and the internet, are the reason democracy became possible.

They gave people a way of following the argument about who are we and where are we going as a society, and even taking part in it from time to time (mainly by voting). Butrience and personality through our own narrow circle of acquaintance.

The famous people whom we vicariously 'know' help to fill that gap, and since these are zero-maintenance relationships, we can have as many as we need.

So if you obsessed about Diana, don't worry. Maybe that's what Bill Clinton is there for, too.

About the author E.C.T. Candappa was one of Sri Lanka's been feature writers in the mid-fifties till the seventies. He was an outstanding journalist at Lake House and distinguished himself as a reporter and feature writer. He is now domiciled in Australia but still very much interested in his country of origin. He visited Sri Lanka last year and interviewed many of the personalities featured in this book.

Continued from yesterday

The man in the uniform of a Police Inspector he knew was Newton Perera. The big-boned officer barely fitted into the cane chair.

The servant had placed white cloths over the seats of the monks as a traditional mark of respect accorded to the Buddhist clergy, the two members of which were seated on them upright and in a patently disturbed manner.

Jayawardene and Inspector Perera were seated on a long couch which was lower in elevation than the chairs upon which the monks sat, that too being a concession to monks above the level of whose seats lay persons may not be seated.

Amerasinghe greeted them with joined hands. He then seated himself and enquired affably after the reason for their visit. Owing to their unannounced arrival and the high-powered nature of the delegation, the customary preliminary conversational overtures were avoided.

After an awkward silence and a bland smile which gave away nothing, Buddharakkita asked Amerasinghe to offer his car to Inspector Newton Perera to go on an errand.

Amerasinghe stared at the monk for a few seconds before replying.

The flabbily, corpulent chief monk adjusted his saffron robe uneasily yet kept the bland smile on.

Amerasinghe wondered why Buddharakkita’s own car could not have been used.

Amerasinghe’s car was also a cream-coloured Opal Kapitan. So the priest wanted another car similar to his own but with a different registration number. Clearly then it was the High Priest’s intention to implicate him in whatever they were plotting, for plotting they seemed to be.

Why did they have to come to his house at all? The inspector could have gone on any errand at any time in a police car but only if it was on a legitimate, or more accurately, a legal errand. So this was a private, illegal matter.

Then why the police uniform?

And why did the four of them have to come if the purpose was merely to send Newton Perera on an errand?

No one need have come at all except Newton; the matter could have been arranged by telephone.

Mystery was piling on mystery.

Amerasinghe did not voice any of these doubts. He promptly agreed to make his car and chauffeur available. The monk was after all an important and powerful person. His influence within the party and in the country had risen steadily since Bandaranaike came into power.

As for the inspector he would easily and gladly have found a way to decline; his connection with him was through the temple. Annually, Perera came to him to request a donation for the organisation of the Kelani Vihara perehera, the spectacular pageant which was second only to the one held by the most influential temple of all, the Temple of the Tooth in Kandy, the Daladaa Maaligaawa, reputed to have in its custody a tooth relic of the Buddha.

Newton left them, and the company turned to desultory conversation. A popular soft drink, orange barley, was served and all drank it, though according to the strict rule, monks took only a drink made of boiled coriander and no food whatever after noon; and then only a simple meal and even that when provided as alms by the faithful.

While the conversation ebbed and flowed, Amerasinghe remained mostly silent, contemplating his visitors, trying to make sense of their errand.

The talk soon centred round politics. And most of it comprised simmering discontent over Bandaranaike’s remissness in one thing or another.

Buddharakkita claimed to speak from the lofty viewpoint of untarnished patriotism. Bandaranaike had not helped the cause of Ayurveda, had not rejected the Marxists sooner and had permitted them to bring in harmful legislation, had mishandled the communal question, had not done enough for Buddhism.

What then was the point of this charade? Amerasinghe knew, and those in the room knew, and hosts of others knew of the real reason for the monk’s raging discontent.

He had not been able to have his own way in the government. He had had high hopes of being the power behind the throne, of manipulating affairs to his benefit and to the benefit of his cohorts through Vimala Wijewardene, his former patron and now his protege.

But repeatedly both had suffered rebuffs within the Government. His dreams of building a business empire had been destroyed by some of the actions or inaction of the Prime Minister.

And, of course, everyone knew he had been like a wounded bull when some scurrilous literature had appeared concerning his relationship with Vimala.

And Amerasinghe knew the lengths to which Vimala would go to have her own way and to wreak vengeance upon those whom she regarded as obstacles in her way.

When Amerasinghe had supported her candidature to Parliament he had not known all of this.

And there was Jayawardene, a printer by trade, a useful ally for a politician or a political party. It was, in fact, a mutually advantageous arrangement. Even if he offered substantial concessions, the bulk of printing that politics spawned always resulted in a lucrative trade.

If corpulence was, as many supposed, a sign of prosperity, then Jayawardene was evidently a very prosperous man. He was less bulky than Buddharakkita but he was trammelled by western clothes and he gave the impression of one about to burst but containing himself out of politeness. His face was bloated and his spectacles were almost sunken between his brows and cheeks. He smelt of a rank medicinal oil he used to groom his hair.

He, too, was a vociferous member of the Freedom Party, but as with many other party members, believed that freedom should be limited to what individuals in the party wished to do. Everyone who opposed such wishes was to be disabled, or destroyed.

It was easy for him to look upon the actions and attitudes of Buddharakkita and Vimala as heroic. He was their faithful camp follower. He was willing to obey their commands. Such loyalty bred rewards and Jayawardene had been more than amply rewarded. Vimala had appointed him to the Board of the College of Indigenous Medicine, and later promoted as chairman of the board.

Now his claims to such eminence were nil and his qualifications to be on the board at all were even less unless it were that Vimala and Buddharakkita wished to leave the imprint of their own ambitions and wiles through the utterly pliant printer.

What was the use of politics if one was unable to reward the fidelity of friends, or more precisely, their servility? Jayawardene sang for his perks through the power of his oratory whenever he was required to do so on public platforms. He was a man eternally on the boil, simmering with righteous rage for his country’s, or patron’s, sake. He was blessed, if one might use that expression loosely pertaining to his character, with a matching, pugnacious appearance.

The other monk Amerasinghe knew as Somarama, a professional associate. He was a fair-complexioned man, spare of frame; and his features were marked by a fierce severity, especially his deep set, penetrating eyes. He, too, appeared to be boiling with barely concealed indignation. Though he did not express such feelings in speech Amerasinghe noted the fire in the monk’s eyes.

It could, of course, have been caused by opium to which drug the monk was known to be addicted though at other times the people who had been near enough had caught a whiff of alcohol on his breath.

He practised ophthalmology, having learnt the art of healing diseases of the eye from another monk-practitioner and being ambitious (for the suffering public or for himself one cannot tell with certainty) sought and obtained a position as an eye specialist at the College of Indigenous Medicine and then as a lecturer through the intervention of the Minister of Health whose home he was wont to visit frequently as he did the temple of the High Priest Buddharakkita.

Such visits were prompted by political loyalty as he, too, was a political bhikku having joined the Freedom Party a few years earlier and worked for the candidature of Vimala.

He was a useful man and could be used under the right persuasion. He was so devoid of any principle or central conviction that his actions were directed largely by his passions and vagrant moods. Amerasinghe was well aware that Somarama was a man prone to wild agitation and violence. He was restless when he lacked a cause and reckless when he had one.

He had thrown himself into Vimala’s candidature to her benefit. He was a powerful mob orator and could hold a crowd spellbound for he had a strong appeal physically as well.

He had helped to break up a public meeting at the Colombo Town Hall, wrenching wires of the public address system with the handle of his umbrella because the meeting was organised by the opponents of Vimala and Buddharakkita.

The sight of a belligerent monk devoted to the principles of ahimsa, non-violence, brandishing a weapon of any sort had been repulsive to Amerasinghe; to have used his umbrella, one of the five basic possessions of a Buddhist monk, a symbol of protection, for a violent purpose revolted him. But he knew that Somarama was also known to carry a revolver for his personal protection.

Somarama claimed that he had enemies and that he heard a nocturnal pounding on his temple door which justified the possession of a firearm. Were there really people assailing his security or was that, too, one of the wild hallucinations to which he was prone when under the influence of opium? He did not live alone in the temple; he had lodgers both religious and lay. And people talked.

They had seen him smoking cigarettes, consuming liquor, eating food prohibited to devout Buddhists; but then, thought Amerasinghe, Somarama could hardly be called a devout Buddhist let alone a member of the Sangha. It was an unfortunate reality that there were rascals in robes who kept mistresses, made shady deals, counterfeited money, sodomised young disciples in their custody. Sometimes the public withheld their support from such monks, sometimes they accepted such behaviour as part of karma, fatalistically. Somarama’s career as a monk had begun inauspiciously enough. As a baby his parents had dedicated him to the temple but while yet a student he had decamped, dropped his robes and lived the life of a layman, briefly, until he was pursued and caught and brought back to the temple in disgrace and kept there until he was fully ordained. He had then settled down to the life of a monk, but in his own way.

Amerasinghe looked at him and noted that he seemed taut while his fiery eyes darted all over the room restlessly. After a while the stretched tension in the room slackened.

(Contd. tomorrow)