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International Journal of Marine Science 2014, Vol.4, No.55, 1-5
http://ijms.biopublisher.ca
1
A Letter Open Access
Coastal green belt in Batticaloa district, Sri Lanka: Is Casuarina a success?
Mathiventhan T. , Jayasingam T.
Department of Botany, Faculty of science, Eastern University, Chenkalady, Sri Lanka
Corresponding author email
International Journal of Marine Science, 2014, Vol.4, No.55 doi: 10.5376/ijms.2014.04.0055
Received: 26 May, 2014
Accepted: 13 Jul., 2014
Published: 11 Oct., 2014
Copyright
©
2014 Mathiventhan and Jayasingam, This is an open access article published under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which
permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Preferred citation for this article:
Mathiventhan and Jayasingam, 2014, Coastal green belt in Batticaloa district, Sri Lanka: Is Casuarina a success?, International Journal of Marine Science, Vol.4,
No.55 1
-
5 (doi
Abstract
Coastal barriers are established for protection.
Casuarina
, a fire prone species, has been popular in Batticaloa district, Sri
Lanka, planted as coastal barrier (belt), especially after the tsunami in 2004. The overall extent of
Casuarina
plantation is about 400
ha, as monoculture. About 52% of belt was established after the tsunami. About 40-50 km of
Casuarina
belt has been established in
the 65 km of the coast line from Periyakallar to Kalkudah/Pasikudah which accounts for 35-40% of the coastline of Batticaloa district.
Casuarina
plantation starts at 50-75m from mean high tide. The distance between patches varies from 50-400 m. A density of 1600 to
3000 plants/ha has been maintained. Field evaluation showed only 50-60% of
Casuarina
has been succeeded; 40-50% shown poor
growth or damaged/disturbed owing to many reasons such as illegal activities, less awareness, financial and management problems.
Casuarina
does not permit ground growth, resulted in low bio-diversity. However, the belt protects vegetable crops from salt spray
and “burning” of leaves. This plantation has other social aspects to consider beyond the protection such as sand mining, garbage
dumping, etc. When assessing both positive and negative aspects of
Casuarina
plantation in Batticaloa, failures are more in
socio-ecological point of view, even though
Casuarina
physically developed in a reasonable manner.
Keywords
Casuarina
; Coastal green belt; Scientific planning
Introduction
Bio-shields are generally defined as planting
vegetation belt along coastlines, which protect the
inland from coastal storms, waves, tsunami and
cyclones. They are considered low cost disaster
mitigating option when compared with hard solutions
(IUCN, 2007). Some of them are mangroves, coral
reefs, sand dunes, Casuarina and coastal home garden
which have different degree of protection to the
coastal areas. In Sri Lanka, the importance of coastal
protection had been realized after severe impacts of
2004-tsunami (Zoysa, 2008). This was reflected in the
establishment of Casuarina plantation along the coast
of Batticaloa district. It was mainly carried out by the
Forest Department (FD) and an NGO “Mandru”.
Casuarina plantation was established with minimum
technical and scientific inputs in Batticaloa district.
Establishment of coastal green belt is a crucial effort
that needs careful planning, scientific and technical
inputs. A sustainable coastal green belt development
needs to include the following conditions such as
suitable species that tolerate xerophytic conditions,
multiple species composition, adequate spacing
between belts and individual plants, fire belt,
eco-social friendly approach and sustainable
management practices. This study was planned to find
out present scenario of existing coastal
Casuarina
belt
in terms of ecological and social point of views.
1 Re
sults
1.1 Area of study
Batticaloa district has 8 coastal DS divisions among
the 14 DS divisions.
Casuarina
plantation had been
found in 5 DS divisions among the eight coastal DS
divisions (Table 1).
Casuarina
plantation was
established in the name of “coastal casuarina
plantation” and “coastal bio shield”.
1.2 Implementation of
Casuarina
plantation
The plantation was established in 372 ha by having
987,000 numbers of plants. Forest Department (FD)
and “Mandru”, an NGO, were the two major
implementing agencies involved. Twenty five
percent (90 ha) of
Casuarina
plantation had been
established by the FD and 75% (282 ha) by the
“Mandru” (Table 1).