Fact Finding Mission on Land & Sea Grabbing at 14 Islands at Kalpitiya

Sri Lanka aims to be the “wonders in the Asia” within coming decade. For achieve this, the Sri Lankan governments’ main development plan is promotion of tourism and related activities in the country. The PRSP strategy in which then SL govt. adopted in 2002 mainly focus was to develop 14 tourism zones along the coast.However, amidst the people’s resistance it was withdrawn at that time and the government was defeated. But, the same plans emerged again as Post Tsunami Development Plans in 2005 under the former president ‘s guidance of Task Force For Rebuild Nation [TAFREN]. Some of the areas in this 14 locations were not touched at the beginning due to war and only Southern Sri Lanka was used for the tourism promotion process. In the Post War Development programs, under the present regime the main area of development they see is tourism. The aim is to bring 2.5 million tourists to Sri Lanka by 2016 against the 0.6 million tourists at the end of 2010. Last year, in 2010 it was reported number of arrived tourists were around 600,000 persons. Now, the government encourage private sector to invest in tourism and infra structure development for attract tourists to the country. With this aim, private sector attract the tourism sector and invest for the maximum benefit out of this opportunity.
As a part of out come of the formation of Food Sovereignty Network in Sri Lanka, in January 2011, the participants felt we need to engage campaign on land and sea grabbing issues all over the country. So, NAFSO and IMSE together with FSNSA decided to conduct a Fact Finding Mission on the tourism project that detrimental to food sovereignty, employment security, access rights, and the human rights of the communities in the islands in Kalpitiya peninsular.
Very importantly, the poor knowledge of the rights of the people, vulnerability due to un organize and least attention from the politicians and authorities push them in to the corners of the margins hence, they are the most marginalized among marginal communities in the country.
The knowledge and information we generate through FMM will help in many social layers, starting from the local communities. Regionally there is an important to local government to guide the people, district governing bodies to understand the irregularities of land use and how they negatively affect the local communities, specifically on fishers in the area. At the same time the study will help the national government to understand their development would not help the majority in the area hence they need to focus their attention to redraft the development policies and work towards more people centered sustainable development policies starting from the Kalpitiya islands and through out the country.
HermaN Kumara