In Sri Lanka’s Blue Economy, More Shrimps, Resorts, and Ports Mean More Hunger*
Nothing may seem negative or problematic about a blue economy. Google the term and you’ll see how international institutions are enthralled by it, as if it’s the panacea for poverty, hunger, and inequality from the abundant seas.
The World Bank refers to it as the sustainable use of ocean resources that can spur economic growth and improve livelihoods and jobs. The European Commission also sees its promise. It lists aquaculture, coastal tourism, marine biotechnology, ocean energy, and seabed mining as the blue economy-based industries that will generate millions of jobs.
The Commonwealth of Nations is equally optimistic. It expects the economic model to lead to social equity. Likewise, the Asian Development Bank anticipates that growth stemming from a blue economy will lead to inclusive livelihood and business opportunities in sustainable tourism and fisheries.
But not all are upbeat. In marine resource-rich Sri Lanka, thousands of small-scale fishers and their families are experiencing a blue economy in ways far from or even contradictory to how it is being envisioned by these institutions.
“Women are not being able to enter the sea and work. Acres of land and acres of sea are being allocated for shrimp farming,” said activist-politician Ananthi Sasitharan of Jaffna District, referring to the plight of female fishers in North Sri Lanka.
Shrimp farming threatens women fishers’ source of food
Nearly 1,500 hectares of paddy fields in the Jaffna District had been converted into shrimp farms, while a 1,000-hectare shrimp aquaculture park within the coastal town of Vidattaltivu in Mannar District is being proposed to be set up by the government’s National Aquaculture Development Authority.
SEE RELATED ARTICLE: Civil war didn’t hurt this Sri Lankan mangrove forest, but shrimp farming might
“There are a lot of women who are dependent on picking up shells, they depend on that livelihood, but they’re not able to do that work anymore because a lot of spaces are being set apart for shrimp farming, said Sasithran, former minister of women's affairs of the Northern Province Council.
Sri Lanka’s exporters are targeting to produce 50,000 metrics tons of whiteleg shrimp (Penaeus vannamei) by 2022 with a projected sale of US$200 million.
Food exports to expand amid children’s food deprivation
The newly installed administration of President Gotabaya Rajapaksa backs the interest of traders. It sees the need to boost food exports to revive Sri Lanka’s post-Covid-19 economy.
In August, Rajapksa even appointed a state minister to concentrate on ornamental fish, freshwater fish and shrimp farming development, multi-day fishing and fish export.
Sasitharan sees this as something ironic. She said that while the government is eager to supply the world with food, it looks like its eyes are shut to the need of its own people to secure their right to food and nutrition.
“Our children are being deprived of nutritious food as they continue to focus on producing food for export,” she said.
In 2017, the Global Hunger Index found that 21.4 percent of Sri Lankan children under five were suffering from wasting or low weight for height. The GHI found this alarming because Sri Lanka was only among the four nations in the world to have every fifth child of the country wasted.
According to the UNICEF, wasting “is usually the result of acute significant food shortage and/or disease” that is “a strong predictor of mortality” among children younger than five years old.
Sasithran was among the presenters in the August 27, 2020 webinar titled, People’s Public Tribunal On the Implications of Blue Economy in Sri Lanka, organized by the World Forum of Fisher Peoples, National Fisheries Solidarity Organization (NAFSO), and Social Need Education And Human Awareness (SNEHA), India.
During the online event, civil society representatives led by leaders from fishing communities and the church, activists, and academicians assessed how the blue economy was being implemented in Sri Lanka through development projects that often clashed with people’s basic rights resulting in their forcible displacement and loss of livelihood.
‘Blue economy not for fishers’ welfare’
For Rathnasinghem Muralitharan, chairman of the Jaffna District Fisheries Solidarity Organization, which is among the network members of NAFSO, the aim of the Sri Lankan government’s blue economy is nothing but “to bring investments that are definitely not for the people.”
Muralitharan cited his and his fellow fishers’ displacement from the Chundikkulam lagoon in the Jaffna and Kilinochchi districts in Northeastern Sri Lanka, which was made into a bird sanctuary in 1938.
In 2009, the Sri Lankan Army took control of the sanctuary from the separatist Tamil Tigers and banned local fishers and residents from accessing their coastal waters, their main food source, which were also Vanni and Jaffna’s major source of fish supply.
In 2012, the army commercialized the area by opening the Chundikulam Nature Park Holiday Resort in the northern part of the sanctuary.
Not far from the establishment is another recreation facility, the Thalsevana Holiday Resort near the town of Kankesanthurai in the Jaffna District that is also being run by the Sri Lankan Army. The place, which was opened to the public in 2010, was also mostly inhabited by fishers until the military took over the area and had them evicted from the property, according to Muralitharan.
“They have taken away these areas from us…They’ve encroached on our rights, they’ve oppressed us. The blue economy is not for the welfare of the fishing community but for their business motives,” Muralitharan said during the webinar.
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Sand mining reduces fish catch
In South Sri Lanka, coastal erosion is worsening and ruining the livelihoods of small-scale fishers as the construction of the Colombo Port City Project progresses.
In a research study presented during the August 27 webinar, NAFSO said the construction of the US$15-billion special financial zone on a reclaimed land had caused the displacement of people from their habitats, including poor and marginalized residents of coastal communities, whose houses were demolished.
Among those affected by the Port City Project are fishing communities from the city of Negombo.
Hilda Jeyamalar, a community leader and fisherwoman from the area, said massive sand dredging for the project had reduced their fish catch, their main source of income.
“When fishers go to the sea, they no longer get as much fish unlike before. The fish stocks have been destroyed… Now we are facing sea erosion. They have removed sand from the village areas. The entire seashore has been destroyed,” said Jeyamalar.
She said that if sand mining continues, thousands of fishers living in 35 villages in Negambo, which is within a lagoon, “will become internally displaced people.”
In their Universal Periodic Review submission on China during the 31st session of the U.N. Human Rights Council (UNHCR) in November 2018, NAFSO and the People's Movement Against Port City (PMAPC) said the sand mining for the construction of the Colombo project “will have important consequences on the coastal fishing industry, resulting in a deprivation of the population from obtaining essential protein.”
“This obviously affects the poorest, who have limited resources to buy nutritious food. The impacts of (the project) on the fishing community are already visible. Due to the sea erosion caused by mining sand, homes of the fishing villages are washed away and the places to park fishing boats are more limited,” NAFSO and PMAPC further told the UNHCR.
‘Victims of development’
Still, in South Sri Lanka, the China-funded development of the Hambantota port had also met stiff resistance from protesting farmers and coastal communities, whose livelihoods were threatened by relocation.
Despite the uproar, the Sri Lankan government proceeded with its US$1.1-billion deal with China, allowing the latter to lease the port for 99 years and develop 15,000 acres of Hambantota into an industrial zone.
“While the government talks about development, the real development is not taking place…We are losing our sovereignty, rights, and independence. We have become the victims of this blue economy development,” concluded Jeyamalar.
Origins of Sri Lanka’s blue economy
Though there is no definite date on when Sri Lanka officially adopted blue economy as an economic model, NAFSO and SNEHA’s research points to 2012 as the year when the government embraced it as a concept. This was during the Rio +20 UN Conference on Sustainable Development held in Rio de Janeiro.
It was in the said conference that a “Blue Summit” was proposed to be held in Abu Dhabi in January 2014.
Conference participants said the summit would allow small island developing states to contribute to an internationally endorsed blue economy document for submission to the Third International Conference on Small Island Developing States in Samoa in September of the same year, which was attended by Admiral Thisara Samarasinghe, Sri Lanka’s high commissioner to Australia, the commander of the country’s navy from 2008 to 2011.
Two years later, “Sri Lanka Next,” a landmark campaign to take the country towards the Blue-Green Era, was formally initiated on January 6, 2016 under the aegis of then President Maithripala Sirisena.
Sri Lanka’s projects that were close to the sea even before the blue economy
But in a June 2020 study, Dr. Fazeeha Azmi, senior lecturer at the University of Peradeniya’s Department of Geography, pointed out that even before Sirisena’s presidency, Sri Lanka had already been constructing development projects that were “close to the sea” and had “disproportionate impact on small-scale fishers.”
Azmi said this was part of the post-war development activities carried out by former president Mahinda Rajapakse that “took a neoliberal development approach to reconstruction.”
‘’Harbors, airports, highways and hotels were constructed to accelerate development and attract foreign investment,” said Azmi in her paper titled, Between the Sea and the Land: Small-Scale Fishers and Multiple Vulnerabilities in Sri Lanka, which was published by Sri Lanka Journal of Social Sciences.
“Many of the development projects were carried out in coastal areas and threatened the livelihoods of small-scale fishers,” she said.
“Taking advantage of the post-war peace dividend, the (M)inistry (of Tourism) has targeted coastal areas, making them hot investment spots for tourism,” she added.
Integrity of blue economy discourse questioned
Meanwhile, in their research study presented during the Aug. 27, 2020 webinar, NAFSO and SNEHA questioned the integrity of the “three Es” in the blue economy’s “dominant discourse” ̶ exploring and sustainably exploiting ocean and marine resources to expand coastal and marine economic activities and facilitate economic growth.
NAFSO and SNEHA said that from the perspective of Sri Lanka’s marine and coastal communities, the “globally adopted” discourse runs counter to what is being implemented on the ground with the following “three E” implications:
• Ecological externalities such as loss of biodiversity as an inevitable consequence of exploitation of coastal and marine resources
• Exclusion of marine and coastal communities from their habitats. Governance, and user rights on marine and coastal commons, resulting in the loss of livelihoods by allowing oceans and coats as open access systems
• Enforcement of maritime security as a deliberate strategy of blue economy towards increasing global governance
*This article is based on the speeches of the participants in the August 27, 2020 webinar titled, “People’s Public Tribunal On the Implications of Blue Economy in Sri Lanka,” organized by the World Forum of Fisher Peoples (WFFP), National Fisheries Solidarity Organization, and Social Need Education And Human Awareness, India. WFFP is a member of the Global Network for the Right to Food and Nutrition.