Land Resource Management

The Sri Lankan Experiences

Sri Lanka enjoys many advantages in respect of land resource
management:
A literacy rate of more than 90 %
Wide access to radio, television and newspapers
A low and declining rate of population growth (0.9%)
Good infrastructure with 95 per cent of the population within one km of an
all-weather road
A variety of agro-ecological zones within its small area
A wealth of reliable information about its natural resources and land use
Available Basic Data for Land Resource Management
Topographic base maps at a scale of 1:10 000 available for much
of the central portion of the country.
District land use maps and natural vegetation maps.
Aerial photography at various scales: much of the country
covered by 1:20 000 photographs.
High resolution satellite imagery becoming available as a new
source of land information.
Agro-ecological zones at 1:250 000 scale.
Geologic maps.
Soils maps.
Erosion Hazard maps.
Landslide Hazard maps.
Forest map of reserves and plantations and forest/land use maps.
Indicative land use and land capability maps.
Sri Lanka has many disadvantages in respect of land resource
management:
A predominantly rural population
Within 80 % of farmers on holding smaller than 0.8ha
The need to import a significant proportion of its food
Massive budgetary and balance of payments deficits
High degree of graduate unemployment

Specific Constraints Relation to Land
Resource Management
Institutionalized procedures for:
assessment of the needs of the people
evaluation of land potential,
alienation of land parcels
administration of its effective use
Too cumbersome and involve an ever growing
array of Government departments and agencies
LAND AND LAND RESOURCES
MANAGERS
Urban Development Authority
Forest Department
Department of Wildlife Conservation
Coast Conservation Department
Land Commissioners Department
Mahaweli Authority of Sri Lanka.
Land Reform Commission

Specific Constraints Relation to Land
Resource Management
Insufficient communication between Government and
land users
The absence of an effective land management strategy
Land use planning has become a rigid mapping exercise
and a series of legalistic controls on land management
Predominantly top-down approach with no stakeholder
participation in the land use planning exercise
There is a lack of continuity in land use planning
activities at the provincial level
Specific Constraints Relation to Land
Resource Management
The DLUPPOs are hampered by a lack of any legal authority
to implement land use plans or enforce any sound land use
practice recommended
The present systematic land use planning at divisional level
and below is unnecessary and wasteful of scarce resources
The indicative land use plans are often inadequate
There is little technical guidance from the central offices
concerning how to address key land use issues.
Map production is centralized and consequently very few
copies of freehand maps are ever produced.
The district land use planning maps have become wall posters
and have not been put to other use
Specific Constraints Relation to Land
Resource Management
Data gaps:
Lack of data on land jurisdiction, administrative
divisions and land parcels for a given location.
Absence of data archives with complete listing of
available information.
Prevalently outdated systematic mapping or
inappropriate scales of data for localized land
resource management, i.e outdated aerial
photography and inaccessibility of users to recent
satellite imagery.
Specific Constraints Relation to Land
Resource Management
Data use and analysis related problems:
Lack of knowledge of methods for analyzing and
compiling information.
Cumbersome procedures of land evaluations, due
to lack of modern computerized tools of map data
storage and retrieval and spatial analysis.
Sharing of information is severely constrained by
lack of facilities to reproduce and disseminate
information stored on individual maps or reports.