Land resources of Sri Lanka

Sri Lanka has a land area of 65 525 km² (6 552 500 ha) and has a coast line of 1920 km. In 1996, 1303 km² were covered by irrigation and hydropower reservoirs and therefore the available land surface for other purposes was 64 222 km². Although the total land area accounts 6.5 Mha that much of land is not directly available for human use. There are areas of land that are topographically unsuitable for use such as steep slopes, waterlogged or salinized land etc.

A land balance sheet was produced by Somasekeram (1996) and it has taken all the available land in Sri Lanka into account. According to that approximately one third of the total land area was under agricultural use and one third was under forest cover. The balance is urban areas and other infrastructure including chena, pasture and patana (Table 3).

Table 3. Land balance sheet for Sri Lanka in 1996

Lands for forests and wildlife conservation

Before the island came under British 80% of the land was under forest cover. However, during the colonization large extents of sloping land in the hill country were converted into plantations without paying attention to the long term adverse impacts. The forests declined to 50% by 1948. After British, we cleared another half making it 25% over a 50 years period and must be around 20% at this time. Encroachment, chena cultivation, illicit felling of timber and conversion to agriculture and urban lands caused the decline. Wildlife conservation accounts 13% of the total land area.

Lands for protect water resources

The crown land ordinance (1947) provided protection of ecologically sensitive areas as stream banks and coastal islands. Under that approximately 290 000ha was under protection. Although with the law large percentages of these reservations , especially in Badulla, Nuwara Eliya districts are occupied by the encroachers. The coast conservation act accept a belt up to 300 m landward as the coastal zone. However, this too utilized heavily for agriculture, settlements, tourism etc.

Lands for agriculture

All major crops except paddy suffered with decreasing available lands cultivation especially due to the poor management practices of the farmers and expansion of urban centers and human settlements (Table 4). Significant increase in land use for paddy is due to the expansion of Mahaweli Irrigation Scheme.

Table 4. Changes in land use for agriculture

Soil erosion and land degradation