Sri Lanka - where someone else’s war is hitting hard
Sharon Brettkelly goes to Sri Lanka for a holiday - and finds a nation struggling with the effects of multiple world events outside its control
The United Nations consistently ranks Sri Lanka in the top 10 nations suffering the effects of climate change - it’s on the front line of extreme weather patterns.
Now it’s also on the front line of a war that’s shaken the globe.
When a US strike on an Iranian warship in the Indian Ocean happened off its coast in early March, tourists turned tail. Bookings dive-bombed, a disaster for a country that relies on visitors and was hoping to use the industry to lift itself out of developing nation status.
“Tourism is the key to getting us out of this so-called third world eye,” says wildlife guide and Colombo University research fellow, Sameera Ariyarathna.
The tea industry has also been hit.
Tea makes up nearly a quarter of this country’s exports, but shipments to its biggest customers, Iran and other Middle Eastern states, have stopped.
At the country’s largest tea factory, Labookellie, machines are still rolling 24 hours a day and it’s still paying its 1000 factory workers and tea pickers. But instead of shipping 70 percent of its production to Iran, it is storing it.
The leaves have to be picked every day, a guide tells visitors to the factory.
“But the tea, we keep it three years, four years, no problem. We don’t export much at this moment,” she says.
What it means though, is that a key export sector is earning less for the country at a time when it needs to find funds to pay for fuel.
It’s widely reported that Asian countries have been among those hit hardest by the Middle East conflict. Sri Lanka, like Bangladesh and Pakistan, is heavily dependent on imported oil and gas, and it doesn’t have the foreign exchange reserves available or the storage space to secure longer term energy supplies.
It means that those who are still trying to carve out a living face soaring fuel prices, and rationing, and long queues at fuel stations as motorists try to get their allocation before another hike.
Private cars are limited to 15 litres of fuel a week, three-wheel tuktuks up to seven litres under a system controlled by a QR code, aimed at preventing stockpiling. Tourism operators like guide and driver Roshan Nelson have to apply for special exemptions from rationing so that they can keep their businesses running.
“I need additional fuel so I have to send a letter to the tourist board. They give permission to take more fuel. I have to download my QR code to my mobile phone, I show it to the fuel station pumper, he scans my QR code and they can see how many litres I have in my account,” says Nelson.
On Saturday’s episode of The Detail Sharon Brettkelly gets a first hand look at how petrol and diesel is rationed, and goes on safari in Yala National Park where climate change is having a real effect.
As weather patterns change, forests that need long dry periods to thrive are being killed by rain and turning into swamps. As well, the balance between predators and prey is upset, resulting in a loss in the type of wildlife that tourists pay to see, like leopards and the golden jackal.
“As a country in the middle of the Indian Ocean, climate change is causing these kinds of troubles so as a country we are struggling a lot to conserve our nature,” Ariyarathna says.
It’s not all doom and gloom - the birdlife is stunning and you still see elephants wandering along main roadsides. The generosity of people in this mostly Buddhist nation is out in force as they celebrate the new moon festival by giving out free drinks and food and other gifts from the roadside.
But the wildlife is dwindling, says Ariyarathna, and the forecast El Niño climate pattern is not expected to help things.
Another important income source that is drying up is the contributions from family members who go to the Middle East for better-paying jobs. In the first two months of this year alone, migrant workers sent US$1.4 billion (NZ$2.38b) home, according to the Sri Lanka Bureau of Foreign Employment.
Struggling Nuwara Eliya guesthouse owner, Lal De Silva says his family needs that remittance from his daughter in the Middle East. But like many, she’s coming home because of the war.
“Those are the people who send the foreign currency to Sri Lanka. Other than tourism, they were sending the money every month to their families from other parts of the world. Now that’s also going downhill,” he says.
This is a country used to crises - from the civil war that lasted more than 25 years, to Covid shutdowns, and catastrophic economic collapse that ended in 2022.
Find out in the podcast how there are fears the country is being tipped back into those bad old days.
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