Investing in Women: Saving Wildlife the Lankan Way

At a time when governments worldwide are struggling to protect an ever-dwindling wildlife population, in Sri Lanka, a dramatically simple strategy seems to bring good results: pay local women incentives for having their husbands abandon the illegal business.


The roads are wide, the houses are spacious and the yards adorned with flowering bushes. There is a motorbike in each yard and a dish tv antenna on every roof - the first look of  Serakkulia - a fishing village by the ocean in North west Sri Lanka - is truly impressive.

 "This is the richest and most prosperous fishing village I have seen anywhere," I think.

 And then I quickly learn, most of the richness and the prosperity has come through illegal fishing.

I am in Serakkulia on a media tour organized by the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP). The UN agency, along with a few other national and international organizations including the IUCN, is trying to protect a highly endangered sea animal called the Dugong. The biggest threat to the Dugong are fishing nets that catch (and kill) any marine creature. Locally known as "Surukku"  and "Laila" - these nets have been recently (2016), but fishermen with a strong greed for money and little regard for law or environment use them anyway. Serakkulia, I hear, was notorious for that.

But today, this is where the Dugong protectors are trying out a never-before strategy: roping in women of illegal fishers and giving them fund to turn entrepreneurs, so their husbands won't feel compelled to earn a lot of money - by hook or by crook.

They said this: Take away messages from CBDCOP12

The 12th conference of the parties of the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity (or CBD COP 12) began here in Pyeongchang, South Korea on 5th of October. Since then, I have met and had exclusive interviews with several leaders here. Each of them impressed me with their answers and especially their patience in explaining complicated issues in the most simple terms. You can read the news articles that I filed from the convention on the IPS news site. Sharing  here, below, are some of the statements from each of these leaders that I am calling my take home messages.

Braulio Ferreira de Souza Dias – Executive Secretary, Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD)

“We now know what we need to do to prevent biodiversity loss and invasive species. We need to integrate biodiversity into our sustainable development.”


Ibrahim Thiaw – Deputy Director, UN Environmental Program (UNEP) 

"Hope that the member countries would really commit themselves to achieve the Aichi targets. It is a collective commitment that needs to be made. If you go back and don’t match your words with action at the national level, it’s not going to work"

Hunted Animals to Haunting Ebola: Nothing’s Too Far-fetched

A few months ago, when Ebola outbreak first began, many of us just didn’t care much. It was a strange disease happening in one part of world - West Africa to be precise -that was far away from us. And, so, we didn’t bother to connect to it at all.

Well, things have changed a lot since then, haven’t they? Ebola has gone out and beyond of West Africa, infecting, as we speak, 8,300people and claiming 4,033 lives in places including Europe (Spain) and the US. And it’s spreading. Suddenly we realize, nothing in this world is too unconnected. No place in this world is too far away. And, in this blog of mine, I want to also tell you that nothing is also too far-fetched either, especially when it comes to a crime and its effect on our lives.

Just before I began to write this, I spoke with some scientists  at the 12th Biological Diversity convention (CBDCOP12) who have been studying the link between biodiversity and infectious diseases. They are Catherine Machalaba, MPH,Health and Policy Program Coordinator  of the Eco Health Alliance in New York and  Anne-Helene Prieur Richard, executive director of the Paris-based biodiversity research institute ‘Diversitas’. I asked them to explain how destruction of biodiversity could also lead to the spread of Ebola virus globally. 

Before I get to their answers, let me remind you what we already know: The recent Ebola outbreak started where eating the meat of wild animals (popularly known as “bush meat”) has existed for a long time. Bat soup, Meat of monkeys and other apes are popular dishes in many countries including Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia. 

But, there is a lot of people also buy these animals for their body parts. As a result, a lot of hunting takes place because people want to make money by selling the animals – dead or alive. And it is with this rampant hunting that the threat of spread of a virus like Ebola also increases.

Dehorning Rhinos to End Poaching : Theory of the Absurd!

The first time that I heard the government of Assam was planning to dehorn Rhinos to as a means of conservation, I thought it was a joke. And so I laughed. It reminded me of a folk tale where a man ate rice off the floor to prevent stealing of his plates.

Courtesy: Deviant Art

Today, after many weeks , I am still laughing. Because, it seems, the government is indeed serious about severing the rhinos' horns (so what if its not life-threatening?) to keep the poachers at bay. In other words, it is serious about following that man that ate the rice off the floor! 

But, the question is, why would anyone cook up such a plan?

Two words come to my mind: 1) desperation and 2) laziness. Assam - the only natural habitat of the one-horn rhinos has always been a target of wildlife smugglers and poachers.The largest number of the rhinos (2500) are found in Kaziranga national park. And, 41 rhinos have been killed in 2013 by poachers in this Kaziranga park alone.