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.
