Managing Arid Areas and Sand Dunes in Sri Lanka - Combating Desertification in Asia, Africa and the Middle East - page 316

not adequately appreciated the “real” cost of erosion to the economy because its
adverse impacts are not immediately manifest. The adverse impacts of “ Chena ”
or “slash and burn farming” on the ecology and environment were highlighted
in the Land Commission Report of 1987. They include changes in microclimate,
soil erosion, and destruction of natural vegetative cycle and loss of forest reserves.
With the diminishing land resource, “slash and burn” farming has been transformed
into a system of “Unirrigated Highland Crop Farming” (UHCF) which is people's
adaptation to nature as a strategy for survival. Planting/sowing in UHCF systems
is either with the “drought ending rain” or soon thereafter, in mixed stands. This
plant-crop mixture includes a variety of food crops, cash-cum-food crops, drought
resistant as well as moisture loving crops of short and long durations of growth.
The field research has shown that UHCF farmers undertake such soil conservation
practices as construction of earth contour ridges, contour drains, terraces and
retaining walls and growing hardy grasses on the contour of ridges.
Employment opportunities in the rural sector did not expand in proportion to
increasing population. Consequently the poorer groups are forced to depend on
the diminishing land resource base. Successive governments have therefore been
compelled to create employment opportunities by opening up forest and reserve
land. The need to rationalize use of land in Sri Lanka has been realized for quite
some time. Protective measures had been attempted mainly through enactments
which lay down conditions for the protection of land and soil. An institutional
framework has also been established to promote and implement such conservation
measures but the implementation has not happened (Box 16.1 ).
Box 16.1: Government Agencies Involved in Dealing with Land Related
Issues in Sri Lanka
There are eight key government institutions involved with land related activ-
ities in Sri Lanka. They include four agencies of the Ministry of Agriculture
and Lands (MAL) and four agencies outside the MAL, as follows:
Survey Department . Responsible for land surveying and mapping of country.
General work program includes contour surveys for irrigation and other
purposes, block and topographical preliminary plan surveys and settlement
demarcation surveys, town surveys, forest surveys, sporadic surveys in-
cluding acquisitions, aerial surveys.
Land Commissioner ' s Department . Responsible for the protection, devel-
opment, management and distribution of state-owned land, including the
distribution of lands under various schemes, issue of permits, grants
and leases under principal acts and laws relevant to administration of
lands. Land distribution programs predominate and concern relieving
(continued)