Г-н Chandima Gunasena
Presently I am working as a project assistant attached to UNIDO. I am in a position to offer a knowledge pack which includes, identification of manageable geographical units to manage urban and rural eco systems using GIS technology, use of nonstructural methods to improve ecosystem resilience, providing solutions with eco conscious green technology applications and energy management concepts, use of traditional Sri Lankan micro catchment management principles for land and water management.
Community participation in land and water management could be identified as one of the successful management strategy practiced in ancient hydraulic civilization in Sri Lanka. Structural and nonstructural land and water management techniques used in the ancient past were based on several hydraulic control systems namely, increase of infiltration by providing detention ponds or depression areas, water quality control by using grass covered areas or constructed wetlands or bio retention areas, increase of flow path to increase the time of concentration and thereby to reduce the flow velocity and the discharge quantity, replenish groundwater aquifers by using structural ponds, grass covered swells etc.
All these ancient water harvesting systems help to retain water not only for human consumption but also for other living flora and fauna allowing retaining the bio diversity. Therefore, ecosystem resilience is well managed at micro scale while development work is carried out by the humans to improve their livelihoods at macro scale. Macro scale development model could be identified as an aggregation of several micro level management systems run by the community.
Micro level geographical units of management or micro catchments are managed by the community and community participation was kept at maximum to manage the land and water resources. This model has been now identified as “Ellangava” management system or cascade management system by several Sri Lankan Scientists.
Principle behind the cascade or “Ellangava” system could be identified as a system which used to classify the landscape according to the topographical features and manage natural hydrological functions within those micro level catchments without any disturbances to the valuable ecosystem services. This management system also support ecosystem services and to maintain the resilience while improving the livelihoods of the stakeholders with the community participation.
This principle could be used globally to address the climate change scenarios to improve the land and water management strategies adapted in any country with the community participation to improve the ecosystem resilience as well as the livelihoods of the stakeholders.
Г-н Chandima Gunasena
Dear FSN-Moderator
Many thanks for sending this email.
I would like to suggest the following for your kind consideration.
1. Female contributions to improve ecosystem services and resilience must be quantified and some indexes must be developed to realize the female personal as a community and their responsibility of safeguarding ecosystems they live in.
Examples
i. number of females in a house and amount of organic fertilizer produced from kitchen wastes
ii. amount of homemade fertilizer used for cultivation per unit home garden areas
iii. number of edible plant varieties could be found in the home garden or Number of edible plant varieties divided by the land area available for cultivation.
iv. amount of annual rainwater received to a particular home garden in meters multiplied by the home garden area
v. amount of pure rainwater used to recharge to replenish groundwater
vi. Value home garden products according to the current market price and save that money when they use home garden products. Amount of money saved by one household and how they utilized that money.
Best Regards
Chandima