A new wave of land grabbing exposed in Sri Lanka

Medium_sri_lankan_farmer
"Land alientation for agricultural purposes should be done strictly on the basis of lease arrangements, and the lease term should not exceed 35 years. (...) However, in the case of land required for agricultural or industrial pupose, if the investment is over US$ 20 Mn. and US$ 30 Mn. respectively, a suitable disposition with a long term tenure could be considered," says the Memorandum. (Photo: War on Want)
War on Want | press release | 08 August 2011

A new wave of land grabbing exposed in Sri Lanka

A recently uncovered cabinet memorandum has provided details of the new “Sri Lankan Land Alienation Policy to Promote Development Activities”. The memorandum outlines how the policy will open the doors for investment in private agricultural production and create special zones for industries and tourism.

The document states that “if Sri Lanka is to reap the maximum benefits from post war opportunities and prosper as a middle income country . . . it is important to revisit the country’s land policy to enable investor facilitation”. Despite promises not to implement World Bank liberalisation policies promoted in the Sri Lanka Poverty Reduction Strategy, this memorandum exposes the current government’s plans to go ahead with policies that will allow land grabbing, destroying the livelihoods of the country’s smallholder farmers.

Sri Lanka has a long history of land grabbing going back to the British colonial era, when, from 1805, land was expropriated for plantations cultivating cinnamon, coffee and rubber. In 1840, with the enactment of the Crown Land Act, the British ensured the availability of land to British investors to set up plantations. Local Sri Lankan communities lost their traditional rights to access and use this land. Land grabbing was further entrenched through the Waste Land Ordinance when a British businessman introduced commercial tea plantations in the district of Kandy. Tea plantations owned by British companies flourished as a result of land grabbing and the exploitation of migrants from southern India through forced labour.

An ex-civil servant from the Sri Lankan government who worked at the Department of Tea and Plantations and prefers not to be named for fear of repression, commented that: “this new land alienation policy is simply granting legal status to a modern wave of land grabs, plundering of our resources and exploitation of cheap labour”.

Dr Lionel Weerakoon, the Director of War on Want's Sri Lankan partner the Centre for Sustainable Agriculture Research and Development (SARD), who has been working for more than 15 years on sustainable agriculture, stated that: “the government should be focusing on promoting and supporting small food producers rather than giving free rein to private investors to continue the land grab”. According to Dr Weerakoon’s research on the livelihoods of people affected by the civil war in the north and east of Sri Lanka, there are approximately 200,000 internally displaced people in the northern district of Mullaithivu alone, who would benefit from sustainable agricultural policies and will suffer serious repercussions under policies to take their land for tourism and export agriculture.
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