Sri Lanka a prisoner, or a power of geography?

            How can Sri Lanka be a Power and not a prisoner 

            of Geography ?

 

             The land area of  Sri Lanka is 65,000 sq.metres, while the 

              sea surronding us  is 7.7 times over.Yet we are all the while 

             concerned about our little island rather than the potential 

             of what we can harvest from the sea around. The sea,the

             part of the Indian Ocean  forms part of our territorial 

             waters.

        

             In the same manner the oceans around the world occur 

             more than 70% of the earth's total surface and contain

             roughly 97% of all its water,measuring about 361.9 million 

             square kilometres. This is divided into 5 major basins:

             The Pacific, The Atlantic, The Indian,The Southern Antartic 

             and the Northern Arctic.

                                                              

 

             Best selling author, Tim Marshall says, "the land on which 

            we live has always shaped us". Is this anything new? 

 

            The impact geography can have on international affairs

             has offered an explanation for such geopolitical events

             as Russia's annexation of Crimea,based on Russia's need 

             to retain access to warm water ports,and also China's 

             action in Tibet to enforce its border with India, and United

             States' former President Trump wanting to build a brick

             wall with Mexico.

 

             What can we understand ? 

 

             We have periodically gone through turbulent times in

             our country, that can make history.

 

             We seem to be constrained by our geography

             rather than by history. Our choices seem limited by 

             the  political and the economic s decisions we are

            forced to take at the present time.

              We see all religions,culture,language - interact with 

              local geography,in recent times,with people wanting

              more control of their destiny?

              We may have hardly understood the cost of war,or the

              complexity  of geoplitics in today's world. We did not grasp

               the cost of  debt. We are now having to meet our 

               commitments as a nation and there is price to pay

               which we will pay by cutting unnecessary expense.            

              Now to get out of our burden,we are ready to save our 

              soul to the IMF. We are ready to arrange a reserve facility

             -Special Drawing Rights- of $800 million to tide over

             our immediate commitments, during August-Sept.2021.

             Sri Lanka has to stabilise foreign reserves which have

             dwindled down by nearly half to USD 4.2 billion, in order

             to pay off a soverign bond repayment of USD 400 million.

            

             One way we can we turn our tide is to think out of the box?

             

            Our sea resource extends to a protected territorial  waters

            boundary -an extent of 22km (12 nautical miles) beyond

            our coastline and covers an area of about 21,500 sq.km.

            This is an unutilised resource up to the present. We do not

            really know why, or how we can ?

        

            The contigious zone or the band of water extending from 

            the outer edge of the teritorial area to up to 24 nautical 

            miles also is part of our territorial waters.

        

            How many of us know that there is no land mass beyond

            and below Sri Lanka extending all the way to the South 

            Antartic?  

 

            We know we are geographically in the middle of the sea 

            shipping  route between East and West. Our strategic 

            location commands a price which we need to optimise. 

             We know shipping lines pass our territorial waters all the

             time to  save both on their fuel costs as well as time to

             reach their destination ports. Time is a very important

             factor in the transit of goods. 

             Could Sri Lanka after research consider charging a 

             Transit Shipping fee of all cargo vessls for use of our 

              territorial waters in the forseeable future?    

 

              Could this levy help to pay our debt over time?    

   

              The downside of this plan of action 

    

               We have to spend to save. We need monitoring of

               our territorial waters. We need a Coast Guard Service,

               if we don't have one. We  need to plot a plan of action.

               It may take months,if not years, but we would be able

               to recover some funds to pay off our debt. 

 

               Would we in the course of this exercise find that there

               also a cost for claiming this Transit fee from Shipping.

 

                We may find that the demand to use our territorial

                water for shipping greater than we would want to cope

                in terms of polluting our seas?

               Victor Cherubi