Echoes of Cuba
I walk the hills rising from an azure blue Caribbean sea, and try to envision the history that I have been told, a history of an island, green, tropical, rich in resources that fell into a despotic military aided rule. The consequence of a power drunk ruler who made it easy for his cronies to […]
What is ‘Organic Agriculture’ and why is it important?
Organic Agriculture can be summarized simply as ‘Systems of agriculture that produces food and fiber free from industrially produced chemicals.’ It encompasses minerals, salts from natural sources, but the basic clear requirement is freedom from industrial chemicals such as fertilizer salts, herbicides and pesticides . There are many variations of agricultural practice worldwide which operate […]
Why Small Farms will be the backbone of food security
The ecological axiom that: ‘Energy flow through a system tends to organise and simplify that system’, is abundantly clear in agriculture. As farms moved from small interdependent units, bounded by fences and hedgerows, to large cropping fields to accommodate machine management, we lose the biodiversity that once existed on that landscape and the biomass that […]
Biocurrency
The Global Commons sustain the air we breathe, the water we drink and the food we eat. It is under threat today, because the Governments and financial institutions of every nation has accepted internalization of the use of the resources of our commons by industry, leading to the collapse of the Global Commons we witness […]
The Creation Formula
From the Archean, 3.5 billion years ago, until the present there is a consistent pattern in all of evolutionary history, increases in biomass and biodiversity the operations of which, create ecosystems services. Although, biomass was impacted five times in the history of life, such that a large percentage of the existing biomass was fossilised, the imperative […]
Responding to our Energy Addiction
Sri Lanka today is in the throes of addiction withdrawal. Reliant on fossil fuels to maintain the economy and basic living comforts, the sudden withdrawal of oil, coal and gas deliveries has exposed the weakness and the danger of this path of ‘development’ driven by fossil energy. Although this was a result of some poorly educated […]
The Required System Change
We need a fresh paradigm towards a permanent truce with nature, in concurrence with her pace and in sync with her rhythm.” Ray Wijewardene, Sri Lankan, Agricultural Scientist Extraordinaire Sri Lanka, is ‘the canary in the coalmine’ of fossil powered economic growth, that promises ‘development’. The pain of withdrawal from addiction is felt from the cooking fires of its homes, to […]
Forget the political BS. This is what needs addressed as a response to ‘Climate Change’
The World Meteorological Organization of the United Nations, have just stated that the warmest 13 years of average global temperatures have all occurred in the 15 years since 1997. That has contributed to extreme weather conditions that increase the intensity of droughts and heavy precipitation across the world, it said. “Our science is solid and […]
What are the urgent and critical issues related to climate change?
Now that Sri Lanka will host a group of international; experts, policymakers, scientists, and practitioners from around the world, travelling here, to address the ‘urgent and critical issues related to climate change’ (2-3 November 2023), It is time to repeat again the Sri Lanka Position Paper to the UN Conference for Climate Change (COP21) Paris 1-10 December […]
De-globalisation: A paradigm for sustainable development ?
“Do not look a gifted horse in the mouth” – So goes an old adage. The import of this statement would seem to be: except a gift with gratitude and do not question its value for after all, it is a gift. It would seem that we have as a nation accepted many gifts in […]