Protecting biological diversity : Sri Lanka case study

This assessment of USAID's approach under the MEP groups findings in three sections: outcomes of the strategies employed; overall impacts; and effectiveness, sustainability, and replicability. (1) Development of protected areas, institutional capacities, and policies to support biodiversity conservation has had some success, but has proceeded slowly. The MEP helped the GOSL to establish and demarcate seven new protected areas and institutional capacity to manage protected areas has been expanded. However, the GOSL has yet to develop a viable forest habitat protection system or a scientifically-based national land use policy to guide forest habitat protection and wildlife conservation; a key weakness has been a lack of coordination among GOSL agencies. Finally, the strategy of creating a private environmental trust to support public education and awareness has had limited results. (2) The most visible impact of support for habitat protection under the MEP has been a halt in human settlement and agricultural cultivation within the new protected areas; however, the establishment of national parks and protected areas has been accompanied by the fragmentation of remaining forests into "island habitats", surrounded by commercial agriculture and population settlements, which may not be adequate in the long run to sustain wildlife biodiversity. The immediate socioeconomic effect of resettlement of park dwellers to areas outside the park is positive. However, land allocation schemes are providing too small a land base to support more than one generation through agricultural production, laying the foundation for future encroachment on protected forest areas. The impact of park creation on households bordering the parks is slightly negative. There has been no apparent increase in tourism in the main parks as a result of the project. (3) Among households formerly residing within the new park areas, those resettled into the new irrigation schemes of the Mahaweli system appear to do better than those displaced to areas bordering parks and wildlife sanctuaries. In regard to sustainability, the survival of many wildlife species in the Mahaweli system is unlikely without assisting regeneration of degraded forest habitats and consolidating these habitats into biologically viable units. Finally, the experiences and lessons learned in protected area creation and management have not been replicated elsewhere in the country or by other public or private agencies. Lessons learned included: (1) spreading investments in forest habitat protection among several organizations/institutions may be preferable to fully subscribing to any one entity; and (2) efforts must be made to insulate environmental trusts or foundations from political manipulation, which sows confusion and leads to mismanagement.