'The Mahaweli, which
flowed close to our home, was quite a wide river when I was a child but I
have noticed it becoming narrower as the years went by. The Mahaweli
has on this occasion wrested back that property that human beings
forcibly occupied. As for the mountains, they have resolved on its own a
land issue, evicting people from properties they were squatting on.'
The above is the rueful observation offered by Kamal Marasinghe, my batchmate from Peradeniya University.
There
was, is and will always be human activity. Human beings cannot exist
outside of nature, although some may believe that they are somehow
superior to it and that they can, at will, intervene in or encroach upon
the natural world without suffering adverse consequences.
The
earth has known all kinds of catastrophes from time immemorial. Humans
have had little to do with tectonic shifts, meteors and such. We don’t
even know the full cost that various species had to pay for such
calamities. We know there have been floods, droughts and plagues
throughout history that our forefathers did not precipitate but we do
know that human activity has had a lot to do with some of the disasters
in remembered history.
We saw the sheer force of Cyclone Ditwah.
Could we have stopped it? Obviously not. Was there anything we could
have done to make sure that Ditwah came and went without a single life
being lost? Probably not. We cannot stop cyclones. We cannot ensure zero
loss of life and zero damage to houses, roads, and other
infrastructure.
On the other hand, there are things we can do and
things we should not do so that damage is minimised. Why don’t we do
what we should, or, put another way, why do we do what we shouldn’t?
Perhaps its arrogance, but it’s more likely that natural disasters,
though more frequent now than they were several decades ago (by the way
we should ask ourselves ‘why?’), are the furthest thing in our minds
when we fiddle around with the environment.
How can cutting a
tree or two be bad, right? What’s wrong with filling a few perches of
marshy land to build a house? What’s wrong with a housing scheme on the
sides of that hill when it means shelter for so many people? What’s
wrong with a massive dam right there when it can irrigate so many
hectares of land and produce so many megawatts of power? What’s wrong
with widening the road that cuts through those hills when it can ease
all kinds of burdens of so many people? What’s wrong in digging under an
entire city if the exercise can yield so many precious stones that can
bring so much foreign exchange to the country?
Individuals
think like this. Prospectors think like this. Governments think like
this. Well, not all the time of course, but such arguments are used
often enough to brush aside those who are skeptical. The problem is that
they add up.
And so, the cumulative actions of many individuals
and the development ‘prerogatives’ of many governments can make
ecosystems vulnerable to the point of collapse. Colombo, for example, is
or was mostly a marsh. Even today, there are several low-lying areas in
the district that are called ‘wetlands’ and are (supposed to be)
protected. Those who are old enough and those who bother to dig up the
data on the matter will understand that large extents of marshland have
been filled for construction. And we get flooded and wonder why. Yes,
part of it had to do with drainage but an important contributing factor
is that there is no place for the water to go in the event of an above
average deluge.
We have rivers. So we have catchments. We have
river basins. There are ecosystems that are fragile and ecosystems that
can be made fragile. There’s a breaking point in all things. Reach it
and the world around us collapses. This happened.
We don’t
think of building houses on a riverbed, even if it’s dry; we know that
the rains will come, the water levels will rise and our houses will be
flooded. So we build on high ground. Solid ground. Or so we think!
There
are obviously multiple factors that could make things bad if hit by a
cyclone, but the scientists probably would tell us that there are
certain non-negotiable no-no things and that the ‘no’ should be
enforced.
Did this happen? We don’t know. We will have to wait on
that, for now is the time to attend to relief. Rehabilitation, later,
but after a thorough post-mortem along political, economic,
administrative and ecological lines obviously.
The river
swelled. The mountain obliterated house and village. Did we, as a
species, trespass. Were we, as a species, blind to warning signs? How
did the Mahaweli become narrower over time? What were hills like before
they became dotted with houses? And that dotting, did it involve
tree-felling?
We claimed the riverbanks. We claimed the
mountains. As a species. A bit like Columbus claiming he ‘discovered’ a
continent or Americans putting a flag on the moon. We can claim of
course. There are state institutions that are there just for this. We
didn’t ask the river. We didn’t ask the mountain. We didn’t think we
needed to check whether mountain and river were happy about all this. We
never expected river and mountain to assert themselves. They didn’t
fill forms. They reclaimed. So to speak.
We were humbled, as a species, by what could be called the ‘Land Reclamation Act, 2025’ as per Kamal Marasinghe’s musings. We should remain humble. It’s probably the only thing that can give us a half-chance of surviving the catastrophes we have called forth.
