ENVIRONMENT, FIRE AND PETROLEUM - EDITORIAL

On World Environment Day - June 5 - the United Nations highlighted the fact that we cannot turn back time. But, we can grow trees, green our cities and clean up rivers and coasts. The UN calls on all people to ‘Reimagine, Recreate and Restore’.

With the Covid crisis raging the world over, the usual large-scale cleanup involving thousands of volunteers, children and the public involving themselves in mass tree planting schemes, clearing of garbage and plastics on our beaches was out of the question and did not take place. Activities were limited to virtual programmes. 

The day in Sri Lanka passed largely unnoticed, especially in view of a potential environment and human disaster, unfolding in the seas, approximately 20 - 22 nautical miles off our western coast.The ‘MV X-Press Pearl’ a cargo ship carrying tons of pollutants, poisonous chemicals and furnace oil caught fire on 20 May. Today the country is facing its worst environment disaster with thousands of micro plastics spilling from the stricken vessel now covering our beaches. The plastic, according to the BBC, can take between 500 to 1,000 years to decompose and are likely to be carried by ocean currents to shores all around the island.

Attempts to put out the fire failed and despite attempts to tow the vessel out to deep sea, the ship sank and its hull rests on the seabed. Attempts to drag it out could damage its tanks loaded with 300 tons of furnace oil spilling into the sea. Making a bad situation worse, the ship’s cargo contained, containers carrying 28 tons of nitric acid which are leaking into the ocean. Bloated bodies of fish and marine life affected by the poisons are dotting the beaches.
The Marine Environment Protection Agency (MEPA) confirmed leaked chemicals have contaminated the water causing ecological damage to coral reefs, lagoons and mangroves where fish breed and could take decades to repair.

Fish is the main and preferred source of animal protein in our island, and accounts for 5% of the total food consumption. Export of fish and fishery products was 13,680 tons and valued US$ 94.3 million in 2004.
According to the Ministry of Fisheries, in 2020, around 287,120 persons living along the western coastline were directly dependent on fishing for a living. ‘If we fish, we eat’, a member of the community was quoted as saying and ‘when we do not fish, we do starve’ he added. Now these unfortunates are adding to the over 600,000 persons or more daily paid workers who lost employment due to lockdowns caused by the Covid-19 pandemic. These numbers add to the pool of workers whose wages have been reduced by employers who claim profit loss due to the pandemic. 

In turn, it means a million or more wage earners have lost their occupation. Coupled with this, is the sky-rocketing cost of living. Surveys carried out by the Daily Mirror reveal, it costs a family of four, over twenty-nine thousand rupees a month to have two basic meals a day. The basic monthly wage in this country is less than rupees twenty-five thousand a month. 

Today, of this workforce, nearly a million have lost their entire source of income and these wage earners are at this time at their wits end to keep the wolf from the door.  The farming community is in turmoil over the sudden move by government to stop the use of petroleum-based fertilizer, pesticides and weedicides. The move, though well intentioned, has taken the agricultural community by surprise as they have had no time to prepare the alternate - organic materials. Farmers fear a drop in production, which will lead to crop and income losses. To consumers it means further rises in the cost of living. 

To those who continue losing employment the rising cost of living could possibly leave them suicidal. It is during these times the ordinary folk are forced to look to government to help them tide over difficult times. Government’s solution unfortunately, has been to declare an increase in the cost of fuel!

O tempora, o mores, are the President and his governing soul mates so closeted in their ivory towers that they do not see or feel the pain of ordinary individuals who even at this moment cannot make ends meet. Do they not realize a rise in the cost of fuel means an immediate rise in the cost of all products – from travel, to basic food items to clothing and all else.   
The decision draws pictures in one’s mind of Emperor Nero of yore, who kept fiddling while Rome was burning!