Tackling poverty in post-pandemic development
Notwithstanding the continuing, if slow, spread of the COVID-29 disease in the country, the President is already looking ahead for the future of the nation. Alongside the management of the health threat itself, there has been considerable effort at contingency management of economic activity. Now the President has appointed a Presidential Task Force on Economic Revival and Poverty Eradication.
If society is to be sustained on a daily basis, then the economy has to be kept ticking over. The continuous string of directives and administrative initiatives emanating from the President’s office over the past three months of the evolving pandemic demonstrated the country’s operational dynamism in facing up to this disaster.
The carefully planned phasing out of the nationwide crippling lockdown is only now under way and, that, too has been suitably amended to slow down the opening up of public activity in the face of recent unexpected spikes in the infection rate. The number of infections stood at 338 yesterday but this is expected to slowly rise further as expanded testing detects more positive cases.
While beefing up the proactive testing programme is the immediate pre-occupation, the President has now appointed a Presidential Task Force to plan for overall economic recovery and tackling the expected upturn in poverty. The Task Force comprises some thirty top officials and experts as well as respected private sector magnates.
The President has rightly included ‘poverty eradication’ in the subject matters to be addressed by the Task Force because the severe socio-economic dislocation being caused by the pandemic is expected to include income loss affecting whole social layers. The on-going economic shutdown has already affected employment which in turn means loss of income.
Unlike the rich countries with their billions and even trillions in financial reserves, Sri Lanka is a developing country that has been burdened with debt in its struggle to reach its current standard of economic and social life. We do not have reserves to draw on and so there will be a socio-economic pinch that needs much innovation and public-private partnership and astute management of the national economy in the coming months.
The nation will now look to this new Task Force to begin to plot our post-pandemic economic course.
Human violence in the Wild
The 25-year-old Wildlife Officer who died when shot at by intercepted poachers in the Gal Oya National Park on Wednesday night is not the first human Sri Lankan to sacrifice his life to protect the wildlife on our island home.
And, judging by the continued illegal preying on of our wild animals to feed human desires despite the visible dying away off of some of our most loved creatures, there may be other brave young Wildlife Officers sacrificing their lives in the future as well.
Our 65,610-square-kilometre island is blessed by one of the world’s highest bio-diversities and bio-densities. We not only have an extremely varied range of flora and fauna but all these numerous species of nature are packed into a small land area. And the physical area of animal habitat is getting smaller literally by the day due to human expansionism.
Humans are not only busily reducing the living space for the other creatures that inhabit this island with us, but also they are busy actively hunting them down. Our area of forest cover has dwindled from over 50 per cent of land area two hundred years ago to just 29 per cent at present with the primeval tree cover comprising a mere 9 per cent.
No wonder that various creatures of our wilderness are constantly spilling over in to human settlement and livelihood areas! Even as our beloved elephants have become a most endangered species we yet describe their predicament as a “human-elephant conflict”. The correct perspective should be ‘human genocide of elephants’ (and other threatened species).
This is why the Department of Wild Life Conservation plays an important role. Already an important element of our tourism attraction, in the post-pandemic period, we will need to rely even more on our wildlife as well as our natural landscapes as we look to tourism as one of the main strategic tracks for economic recovery.
It is hoped that not only will the killers of a State officer on duty be prosecuted and severely punished, but also that the authorities investigate and interdict the consumers and markets that stand to benefit from this poaching of our wildlife. New and growing global market demand includes genome and DNA industries for medical and industrial purposes as well as exotic food interests and rare fauna and flora interests.
Given the increasing importance of our (dwindling) natural habitat, it is time that the Wildlife Department is given more legal teeth as well as more human and technical resources to protect our flora and fauna. Such new technology as remote-controlled surveillance drones can be deployed to help our Wildlife rangers who are also an ‘endangered species’.
Notwithstanding the continuing, if slow, spread of the COVID-29 disease in the country, the President is already looking ahead for the future of the nation. Alongside the management of the health threat itself, there has been considerable effort at contingency management of economic activity. Now the President has appointed a Presidential Task Force on Economic Revival and Poverty Eradication.
If society is to be sustained on a daily basis, then the economy has to be kept ticking over. The continuous string of directives and administrative initiatives emanating from the President’s office over the past three months of the evolving pandemic demonstrated the country’s operational dynamism in facing up to this disaster.
The carefully planned phasing out of the nationwide crippling lockdown is only now under way and, that, too has been suitably amended to slow down the opening up of public activity in the face of recent unexpected spikes in the infection rate. The number of infections stood at 338 yesterday but this is expected to slowly rise further as expanded testing detects more positive cases.
While beefing up the proactive testing programme is the immediate pre-occupation, the President has now appointed a Presidential Task Force to plan for overall economic recovery and tackling the expected upturn in poverty. The Task Force comprises some thirty top officials and experts as well as respected private sector magnates.
The President has rightly included ‘poverty eradication’ in the subject matters to be addressed by the Task Force because the severe socio-economic dislocation being caused by the pandemic is expected to include income loss affecting whole social layers. The on-going economic shutdown has already affected employment which in turn means loss of income.
Unlike the rich countries with their billions and even trillions in financial reserves, Sri Lanka is a developing country that has been burdened with debt in its struggle to reach its current standard of economic and social life. We do not have reserves to draw on and so there will be a socio-economic pinch that needs much innovation and public-private partnership and astute management of the national economy in the coming months.
The nation will now look to this new Task Force to begin to plot our post-pandemic economic course.
Human violence in the Wild
The 25-year-old Wildlife Officer who died when shot at by intercepted poachers in the Gal Oya National Park on Wednesday night is not the first human Sri Lankan to sacrifice his life to protect the wildlife on our island home.
And, judging by the continued illegal preying on of our wild animals to feed human desires despite the visible dying away off of some of our most loved creatures, there may be other brave young Wildlife Officers sacrificing their lives in the future as well.
Our 65,610-square-kilometre island is blessed by one of the world’s highest bio-diversities and bio-densities. We not only have an extremely varied range of flora and fauna but all these numerous species of nature are packed into a small land area. And the physical area of animal habitat is getting smaller literally by the day due to human expansionism.
Humans are not only busily reducing the living space for the other creatures that inhabit this island with us, but also they are busy actively hunting them down. Our area of forest cover has dwindled from over 50 per cent of land area two hundred years ago to just 29 per cent at present with the primeval tree cover comprising a mere 9 per cent.
No wonder that various creatures of our wilderness are constantly spilling over in to human settlement and livelihood areas! Even as our beloved elephants have become a most endangered species we yet describe their predicament as a “human-elephant conflict”. The correct perspective should be ‘human genocide of elephants’ (and other threatened species).
This is why the Department of Wild Life Conservation plays an important role. Already an important element of our tourism attraction, in the post-pandemic period, we will need to rely even more on our wildlife as well as our natural landscapes as we look to tourism as one of the main strategic tracks for economic recovery.
It is hoped that not only will the killers of a State officer on duty be prosecuted and severely punished, but also that the authorities investigate and interdict the consumers and markets that stand to benefit from this poaching of our wildlife. New and growing global market demand includes genome and DNA industries for medical and industrial purposes as well as exotic food interests and rare fauna and flora interests.
Given the increasing importance of our (dwindling) natural habitat, it is time that the Wildlife Department is given more legal teeth as well as more human and technical resources to protect our flora and fauna. Such new technology as remote-controlled surveillance drones can be deployed to help our Wildlife rangers who are also an ‘endangered species’.
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