Religious unity to save Mother earth-EDITORIAL

17 July 2015 06:56 pm

With Mother Earth facing its worst ever catastrophe due to the pollution of the air the soil, water and food the oceans and the bio diversity in the ecology,  there is an urgent need for all religions to come together for a common battle to defeat this monstrous threat to human life. 

This was emphasised at an all-religious event held last Monday at Fatima Church in Maradana to coincide with the 50th jubilee of the ordination of Rev. Fr. Aloysius Peiris SJ who is widely respected as the pioneer of Buddhist--Christian  encounter and dialogue.  

Organic agriculture scientist Ranjith Seneviratne—who worked for more than 20 years as a senior executive officer of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) in Rome and has been actively involved in organic agriculture for about 35 years made some disclosures which stunned the congregation of more than six hundred, Mr. Seneviratne said that since 1980 Sri Lanka had been using or abusing far too many agro-chemicals to the extent that most of our soil was losing the fertility that we have been blessed with for thousands of years. The imported chemical fertilizers, weedicides and pesticides – most of them toxic—were killing most of the organisms that gave fertility to the soil.  

For thousands of years, Sri Lanka has maintained a highly fertile soil with agriculture being part if not the heart of our culture and civilization. But after Sri Lanka swallowed wholesale the negative aspects of the globalised capitalist market economy the transnational chemical corporations have been allowed to take control of Sri Lanka’s agriculture and farmers.

Mr. Seneviratne made the shocking revelation that during the two world wars and later during the wars in Korea and Vietnam. These TNCs had produced substances for deadly chemical weapons. After the wars ended these companies lost their market and therefore invented new markets, mainly in the third world, for the agro-chemicals they promoted as being vital for bigger harvests. Sri Lanka was one of the countries that swallowed these poisonous lies. The toxic agrochemicals, after virtually destroying our soil had also polluted our ground water to such an extent that in recent years at least 23,000 people have died of kidney failure mainly in the North Central Province. The crisis is so severe that President Maithripala Sirisena acted fast to obtain a grant from China to build a modern 500-room kidney hospital in Anuradhapura.

The former FAO expert also made some disturbing revelations of what the TNCs in their neo-colonial economic war were trying to do through genetically modified food items.  The GM process produced huge fruits which were attractive but medical scientists were still not certain as to what side effects these GM products could have on people because these items are unnatural. These are produced through a process known as terminator technology where there is no natural germination. These modified seeds produce only one plant or harvest and die after that. So the cultivators have to keep on buying expensive seeds from the TNCs which have patent rights. Some TNCs are even playing around with rice. They claim they have produced fortified rice but scientific investigations have shown that this so-called fortified rice contains up to 80 percent sugar. This may be one of the reasons why more than 25 percent of Sri Lankans—that means about five million people and mostly the poor—are known to be suffering from diabetes which is known as the silent killer because it eventually leads to heart ailments.

Mr. Seneviratne made another shocking revelation. He said scientific research had shown that plastic bottles contained a substance which sends some poison into the water. This had led to excessive growth hormones in females, whereby girls attain age when they were as young as eight, while for male, the fertility process was delayed. He urged that we should keep drinking water in bottles or stainless steel containers. 

We urge the religious authorities and the government to conduct awareness programmes in the places of worship, in the media and elsewhere to help the people take steps to turn around from the self-destructive course we are now taking.