HAMSTRUNG BY FOSSIL FUELS

Sashan Rodrigo explains the need to adopt sustainable practices in Sri Lanka

Sri Lanka is experiencing an unprecedented economic crisis and enduring power cuts, fuel rationing and dire shortages of everyday items.

Due to a drastic lack of foreign exchange reserves, the nation has been unable to pay for shipments of fuel that are essential to the generation of electricity and the country has had to rely on limited hydropower generation to fulfil its energy requirements.

Every sector and industry has been affected. Take, for example, the tourism industry. Tourism has traditionally been the third largest foreign exchange earner for the island: US$ 2.4 billion in 2014, and in 2019 the industry’s forex earnings were 4.3 billion dollars.

A recent development policy framework projected tourism’s total earnings to be some US$ 10 billion by 2025. However, these plans have been derailed by the Easter Sunday attacks in 2019, the COVID-19 pandemic and the current economic crisis.

In addition, climate change has already begun to show its impact on the tourism industry. A warming planet is causing sea levels to rise and increasing heat stress. And since approximately 60 percent of Sri Lanka’s tourism industry is located in its coastal areas, the loss of beachfront, marine biodiversity and coral reefs are potential harmful contributors affecting its wellbeing.

The Ministry of Environment says that Sri Lanka’s Nationally Determined Contributions (NDC) from the tourism industry are to identify solutions and adapt to climate change but due to the economic crisis, the industry is struggling as it remains dependent on – presently scarce and difficult to procure – fossil fuels such as diesel and petrol.

This crisis has created a very high demand for diesel – to power generators in hotels to mitigate the effects of extended power cuts and to transport tourists from point A to B. The government has deemed tourism an essential industry and granted special permission for travel operators to be prioritised above the general populace in the provision of stocks of diesel. This situation has at times created a conflict at the pump at fuel outlets.

The general populace has to wait in long queues, often for half a day or more, simply to buy fuel to survive. Due to this, the refuelling stations are unwilling to prioritise one sector over the other. As a result, hotels have advised guests to bring along alternate means by which to power their devices. Unsurprisingly, diesel shortages have also hampered travel around the island.

Sri Lanka’s government has further aggravated the situation by not providing a reliable long-term solution to the fuel crisis. It has been reluctant to subsidise and facilitate the wide scale contribution of renewable energy – viz. solar power – to the national grid.

When solar power options were first introduced the government did subsidise the process and a ‘net metering’ approach proposed whereby people would feed the generated solar power to the grid, and the Ceylon Electricity Board (CEB) would pay for this energy.

This subsidy was subsequently withdrawn and solar generation was rendered so expensive that very few could afford the conversion to solar power. As a result, the tourism industry has also suffered.

Off-grid solar solutions should have been subsidised to provide SMEs with an alternative source of energy to the national grid. If these entrepreneurs had been enabled to go off grid, they would have been able to bring in the vital US dollars that are desperately needed to bolster forex reserves.

Now, many hotels are feeling the pinch of the power cuts and are desperate to find diesel to be able to continue operations.

Suppliers to hotels are also unable to deliver critical supplies such as food stocks and toiletries due to a lack of diesel to fuel their delivery trucks. A longer term solution to this would be to encourage and promote diversified practices such as vertical gardens and/or the obtaining of produce from local communities.

Short-term thinking, corruption and mismanagement of resources have led to over reliance on fossil fuels to power crucial functions of our economy.  The government has also failed to grasp the increased demand that the CIFC (Port City) will have on the national grid, which will in time divert essential resources away from industries such as tourism that can provide an immediate benefit to the economy.

Even though tourism can offer valuable earnings to bolster our foreign exchange reserves, it has been hampered by the lack of planning and investment in sustainable energy practices. The NDCs that were developed could provide a good framework to go by for the future but research needs to be conducted on their impact on the tourism industry.

However, our current policies and practices need to be changed and the focus should be more on sustainable alternatives rather than only on fossil fuels for energy solutions.