Participatory Forestry in Sri Lanka: Success or Failure?

Presentation Abstract

Dinuka Senevirathne

Department of Forestry and Environmental Science

University of Sri Jayewardenepura, Sri Lanka

Sri Lanka was once a heavily forested island, but over the present century its forest cover has declined markedly to about 29%. Historically, much of the loss may be attributed to the creation during colonial times of plantations of tea, rubber, coconut and other crops. In the last decade the greatest single cause of deforestation has been the accelerated Mahaweli Development Program, a major irrigation scheme fed by a series of dams across Sri Lanka's largest river. Although not always publicly acknowledged, this resulted in the clearance of substantial areas of natural forests. However, in the 1980s there was a widespread recognition of a need for reforestation and forest conservation measures in both government and donor circles. Although there had been attempts to launch social forestry practices in Sri Lanka, forest management on a truly participatory basis was not taken place, because local people have not actively involved in tree or forest management in partnership with the Forest Department. The program have been run in many ways namely Taunga, reforestation, community forestry, participatory forestry, natural resource development. All those programs were implemented based on different aspects. Mainly the success of a program depends on the social factors, dependency on forest and awareness of the outcome. As per Sri Lanka socially now there are no much of tribes but people live as individuals and question the procedures in their own manner. Therefore it is actually hard to continue such community programs. On the other hand, the dependency on the forests or forest products declined at major level in Sri Lanka. Therefore it was hard to convince the people to work in such programs. However, different incentives were given to encourage the participation. Recent studies conducted on social forestry programs identified the need of institutional support to conduct such programs in successful manner.