Accountability and Universal Values in Development
Photo courtesy World Bank Something is of universal value if it has the same value or worth for all, or almost all, people. This claim could mean two importantly different things. First,…
Author: Ranil Senanayake
Killing us slowly
When we ask the question, who uses pesticides? Followed by the question who promotes pesticides? It is relatively simple to see who gains and who looses by the promotion and use of…
Agricultural Madness
(Photo credit: Claude Dupuis, IDRC-CRDI) The current ‘development’ madness that affects agriculture also prevails over agricultural research and does not bode well for this nation. It begins with the fact that, young agricultural…
Packets of White Powder
Photo courtesy Arsenic and toxins found in baby rice food – what you need to know Suddenly, scores of packets of white powder began appearing in the homes of many farmers we were…
Climate Change
Image from Climate Change Adaptation Sri Lanka While awaiting to hear of the brilliant contributions that Sri Lanka has made to the just concluded United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), conference…
Restoring Shelter
The World Meteorological Organization, part of the United Nations, have just stated that the warmest 13 years of average global temperatures have all occurred in the 15 years since 1997. That has…
Desire, Violence and Leadership
Image courtesy Canadian Lawyers Abroad’s Blog It is the human being that should be the primary concern of any development programme. After all, it is for the benefit of humanity that all development…
Development or maldevelopment?
Image from Wikipedia In the current hype on ‘Development’ have any of us questioned its intent? Does it just mean ‘progress’ in the manner referred to by Anada Coomaraswamy when he published…
De-globalisation: A paradigm for sustainable development?
Illustration by Claudio Munoz, courtesy the Economist “Do not look a gifted horse in the mouth” – So goes an old adage. The import of this statement would seem to be: except…
Subsidizing Addiction?
It was with this that I opened my article on ‘wildlife conservation’ in 1979. I was being confronted to a national extinction of the in-situ wildlife populations within anthropogenic ecosystems. In other…
Future of Farming in Sri Lanka
Original photo from asianews.it Farming in a sustainable, productive manner has been a hallmark of every human tradition that has endured history. There are many traditional farms existent today that have been…
Right to Food: Ecologically based agriculture
Gannoruwa Agriculture Park. Photo credit Chaminda Wijesekara Background: “We” said the villager holding his dying child in that unspeakable agony only parents in such situations know, “don’t want the right to vote,…
Food or Poison?
Image courtesy Ceylon Luxury The food drive announced by the Government, , has to look at the whole question of public health very seriously or we could wind up doing more harm…