Land use in Sri Lanka: past, present and the future

Abstract

Absract Sri Lanka consist of 6.55 million ha of land area where only about 50% is arable due to unsuitable terrain, inland water bodies and forest reservations. At present with an estimated population of 18 million, the per capita arable land area is about 0.15 ha. This indicates heavy pressure on agricultural land use. The present land use pattern in Sri Lanka is a legacy of land policy of the colonial past where export based commercial plantation agriculture was superimposed on a traditional subsistence farming system. Therefore, examining the past and present land uses in a critical manner will pave the way in determining policies for the optimal utilization of land and water resources in a sustainable manner for the future. The objective of this paper was to critically examine the past and present land uses in Sri Lanka in a view to propose criteria for land use planning in the future. The administration and management of land in Sri Lanka is governed by more than 39 operational laws. Some of these important legislation had a profound effect on land use in the country. Due to the Crown Land Encroachment Ordinance (CLEO) in 1840, more than 90% of the land was vested with the government. Even at present 82.3% of the land is controlled by the state showing the influence of such legislation. At present about 40% of the total land area is used for agriculture while another 30% is forest and wild life reserves. The balance is used for all other activities as urban and infrastructure development. Out of the agricultural land 40% is used for plantation agriculture and 28% for rice cultivation. From 1946 to 1982 the area under tea, rubber and coconut decreased by 10%, 25% and 9% respectively, while the area under paddy increased by 9%. The major features of land ownership shows that the state controls about 82% of the land while only 17.7% is privately owned. This leads to landlessness showing that 27% of peasants are landless, where 42.4% of all holdings are less than 0.4 ha, and 82% are less than 1 ha. This situation has led to high level of encroachments on to state land. This is also shown from the decline of the forest cover over the decade in the country. The forest cover, which was 90% during 1900 when the population was 3.5 m has declined to less than 20% at present. The major weakness of the land use policies in the past and present have been the lack of sound reasoning supported by a reliable and systematic data base on land and water resources. In the future rationalization of land use is needed where the available land has to be divided for competing demands in an objective way. Another challenging issue is the determination of the optimum extends of land that should be kept under forest cover. In this aspect the Soil Science Society of Sri Lanka has developed a

Full text

Symposium no. 31 Paper no. 974 Presentation: poster
974-1
Land use in Sri Lanka: past, present and the future
MAPA R.B. (1), KUMARAGAMAGE D. (1), GUNARATHNE W.D.L. (2) and
DASSANAYAKE A.R. (3)
(1) Department of Soil Science, Faculty of Agriculture, University of Peradeniya,
Sri Lanka
(2) Department of Export Agriculture, Matale, Sri Lanka
(3) Land Use Division, Irrigation Department, Colombo, Sri Lanka
Absract
Sri Lanka consist of 6.55 million ha of land area where only about 50% is arable
due to unsuitable terrain, inland water bodies and forest reservations. At present with an
estimated population of 18 million, the per capita arable land area is about 0.15 ha. This
indicates heavy pressure on agricultural land use. The present land use pattern in Sri
Lanka is a legacy of land policy of the colonial past where export based commercial
plantation agriculture was superimposed on a traditional subsistence farming system.
Therefore, examining the past and present land uses in a critical manner will pave the
way in determining policies for the optimal utilization of land and water resources in a
sustainable manner for the future. The objective of this paper was to critically examine
the past and present land uses in Sri Lanka in a view to propose criteria for land use
planning in the future.
The administration and management of land in Sri Lanka is governed by more than
39 operational laws. Some of these important legislation had a profound effect on land
use in the country. Due to the Crown Land Encroachment Ordinance (CLEO) in 1840,
more than 90% of the land was vested with the government. Even at present 82.3% of
the land is controlled by the state showing the influence of such legislation. At present
about 40% of the total land area is used for agriculture while another 30% is forest and
wild life reserves. The balance is used for all other activities as urban and infra-structure
development. Out of the agricultural land 40% is used for plantation agriculture and 28%
for rice cultivation. From 1946 to 1982 the area under tea, rubber and coconut decreased
by 10%, 25% and 9% respectively, while the area under paddy increased by 9%.
The major features of land ownership shows that the state controls about 82% of the
land while only 17.7% is privately owned. This leads to landlessness showing that 27%
of peasants are landless, where 42.4% of all holdings are less than 0.4 ha, and 82% are
less than 1 ha. This situation has led to high level of encroachments on to state land.
This is also shown from the decline of the forest cover over the decade in the country.
The forest cover, which was 90% during 1900 when the population was 3.5 m has
declined to less than 20% at present.
The major weakness of the land use policies in the past and present have been the
lack of sound reasoning supported by a reliable and systematic data base on land and
water resources. In the future rationalization of land use is needed where the available
land has to be divided for competing demands in an objective way. Another challenging
issue is the determination of the optimum extends of land that should be kept under
forest cover. In this aspect the Soil Science Society of Sri Lanka has developed a

MAPA ET AL. 17th WCSS, 14-21 August 2002, Thailand
974-2
systematic soil data base covering 28 and 45 bench mark sites for the Wet and
Intermediate Zones of Sri Lanka. In addition the soil data base for the wet country is
now being developed. These include the site features of the major land units found in
the country, description of the soil profile and characterization of soil physical and
chemical properties. It is envisaged that many organizations now involved in land use
planning will use this data base in making proper land utilization for the future.
Keywords: land use, land use planning, soil data base
Introduction
Sri Lanka is an island with a land area of about 6.5 million ha where
topographically the country has two distinct features consisting of a central highland
area rising above 2500 meters and a lowland plain which surround it and extend to the
coastal regions. The climate is tropical and maritime with two distinct monsoonal
seasons, the southwest monsoon during May to September and the northeast monsoon
during October to January. Based on the mean annual rainfall three major rainfall zones
as the wet zone (>2,500 mm), intermediate zone (2,500-1,750 mm) and dry zone
(<1,750 mm) are recognized. From the total land area 63.6% is found in the Dry Zone,
23.2% is in the Wet Zone and the remainder of 13.2% is in the Intermediate Zone.
From the total land area only about 3 million ha are arable due to unsuitable terrain,
forest reserves and inland water bodies. In 1870 when the population was 2.7 million
the per capita land area was 2.7 ha. Based on the present estimated population of 19
million, the per capita availability of arable land reduced to about 0.15 ha, indicating
heavy pressure on agricultural lands (Nayakekorale, 1980). When the land use is viewed
from the forestry perspective, the forest cover has been declining throughout the years
in Sri Lanka. The forest cover, which was 90% during 1900 when the population was
3.5 million has declined to less than 20% at present which is much less than the world
average of 30% forest cover.
Until recently many decisions on land use matters in Sri Lanka were taken on a ad-
hoc basis using the local knowledge an the intuition of the officers concerned. As a
result inevitable mistakes were made and inappropriate uses were applied to the land.
This shows the need for rationalization of land use, where the available land should be
distributed among competing demands on the basis of some objective criteria.
Examining the past and present land uses in a critical manner will pave the way in
determining policies for the optimal utilization of land and water resources in a
sustainable manner for the future. Therefore, the objective of this paper was to critically
examine the past and present land uses in Sri Lanka in a view to propose criteria for
land use planning in the future. The past is considered as the time prior to 1948 where
Sri Lanka became independent, the present as the period from 1948 to 2000 and the
future as the period into the new millenium.
Past Experience
In the 15th century before Sri Lanka was invaded by foreigners one of the most
advanced civilization in irrigated agriculture existed in the country. This consist of
maintaining the highlands receiving high rainfall with natural montane forest cover as
catchments for major rivers, while the lowland plains were cultivated with rice and
other field cops. In addition, spices and other highland crops were cultivated as mixed

MAPA ET AL. 17th WCSS, 14-21 August 2002, Thailand
974-3
gardens in selected areas of the mid country where plant canopies at different heights
used the solar radiation more efficiently while minimizing the raindrop impact on soil
erosion. With the invasion from foreign countries the existing traditional subsistence
farming system was superimposed by commercial plantation agriculture.
The administration and management of land resources in Sri Lanka is governed by
more than 39 operational land laws by 1985 (Anonymous, 1985). The most important of
these prior to independence is the Crown lands Encroachment Ordinance of 1840,
implemented by the British Government, where all forest uncultivated, unused land and
lands where ownership was difficult to establish was vested with the government and
called “Crown Land”. Coffee was first grown in these lands and later expanded to tea,
rubber and coconut cultivation. Data from the agricultural statistics collected in 1982
showed that 82.3% of the land is still controlled by the state showing the influence of
such legislation. This is different to the ownership of land in countries like Thailand,
which did not experience colonial rule, where 80% of the land is privately owned and
only 20% under government control.
In Addition, the changes of land use is also related to the population growth which
alters the demand for land for urban development in addition to agriculture. The change
in land-man ratio of total land resource from past to present is shown in Table 1. Even
though the present land-man ratio is 0.3 ha the actual ratio for arable land is low as 0.15
ha. This will further reduce due population increase and land degradation.
Table 1 Changes in land-man ratio in Sri Lanka.
Year Land Extent
(million ha.)
Population
(millions)
Land-man Ration
(ha/man)
1871 6.55 2.4 2.7
1901 6.55 3.5 1.8
1953 6.55 8.1 0.8
1986 6.55 16.5 0.4
2000 6.55 20.0 0.3
Present situation
Agricultural land use
Land use has not been surveyed and documented at regular intervals in Sri Lanka.
The land use of the whole country was first estimated by the Hunting Survey
Corporation, Canada (1961) based on the aerial photographs of early 1950. The present
national land use map published by the Survey Department of Sri Lanka is at a scale of
1:1,000,000 (Somasekan, 1988) where the minor land use types cannot be
accommodated. More information on land use types could be obtained from district land
use maps which are at a scale of 1:100,000. These are only available for certain districts.
In addition the Coast Conservation Department of the Ministry of Fisheries provides
more detailed land use maps of the coastal areas at a scale of 1:6,000.
At present little more than one third of the total land area of the country is under
agricultural uses while another one-third is under forest and wild life conservation. The
balance is used for all other uses including urban area and for infra-structure.
Somasekaran (1996) using a land balance sheet showed the land use of the whole
country as given in Table 2.

MAPA ET AL. 17th WCSS, 14-21 August 2002, Thailand
974-4
Table 2 Present land use of different sectors in Sri Lanka.
Land Use Area (ha) Percent
Reserved land (reservations, streams, roads) 585,300 8.9
Forests and catchment areas 2,000,000 30.5
Steep lands 380,000 5.8
Lands above 1,500 meters contour 76.400 1.2
Barren land 77,000 1.2
Marshes and mangroves 70,000 1.1
Presently used land 2,635,000 40.2
Sparsely used land (shifting cultivation, patana) 728,000 11.1
Total 6,552,500 100.0
The land utilization within agricultural sector, taken from the Agricultural Statistics
of Sri Lanka (1988) is shown in Table 2. As seen from this table most of the agricultural
land is utilized for plantation crops as tea, rubber, coconut and paddy (Dimantha, 1992).
Land use changes of Sri Lanka since independence in 1948 has been surveyed and
documented at regular intervals than in many Asian countries. These are mainly through
topographic mapping, air photo surveys and periodic agricultural census. The changes
in the major crop areas including paddy, tea, rubber and coconut during the post
independence period is documented in Table 4. As shown from this table the tea, rubber
and coconut area decreased while there was an increase in the paddy area. The increase
in the paddy area was mainly due to opening of large areas of land as settlement
schemes in the dry zone with irrigation facilities. The rubber lands decreased drastically
due to diversification and settlement schemes in the wet zone of Sri Lanka. According
to the agricultural statistics the total area under agriculture increasedonly slightly from
28.8% in 1962 to 31.1% in 1982. Despite this slight increase in agricultural land use, the
productivity increased due to the increase in yields.
Table 3 Land utilization within the agricultural sector.
Land Use Area (ha) Percent
Major plantation crops (Tea, Rubber, Coconut) 798,103 39.7
Other permanent crops 176,500 8.8
Paddy 556,982 27.7
Annual crops other than paddy 195,048 9.7
Wood and forest land 54,129 2.7
Pasture land 20,097 1.0
Cultivable area but not cultivated 91,646 4.6
Area under roads and buildings 73,416 3.7
Rocky and Waste land 40,805 2.1
Total 2,008,728 100.0

MAPA ET AL. 17th WCSS, 14-21 August 2002, Thailand
974-5
Table 4 Changes in extents of lands under major crops.
Land area (.000 ha)
Crop 1946 1962 1982
Percent Change
(1962-1982)
Paddy 370 460 499 +8.73
Tea 215 231 207 -10.04
Rubber 232 229 171 -25.47
Coconut 433 466 416 -10.75
Land tenure
Landlessness is a common feature with Sri Lankan farmers, which resulted from
the Crown Lands Encroachment Ordinance implemented in 1840 by the British
Government. According to the 1982 agricultural census and statistics 27% of the
farmers are land-less while 42.4% and 82% hold lands less than 1 and 2 acres
respectively. The highest land-less-ness of 25%-30% is shown in Nuwara Eliya district
with Matale showing 38.2% and Rathnapura 32.2% giving an average figure of 25% to
30% for the whole country. This landlessness among the peasants led to encroachments
on state lands where by 1979 more than 400,000 ha (6% of total land area) has been
encroached. These encroachments were mainly forest clearings, which led to land
degradation resulting in environment problems. ‘Regularizing’ of encroachments by
successive governments encouraged the people to continue this practice.
The most far reaching piece of legislation which changed the land ownership
pattern of the island after independence was the Land Reform Law of 1972 which
nationalized a considerable portion of most productive privately owned land. The
private ownership of land was restricted to 10 ha of paddy land and 20 ha of highland
per person. This was further extended by the Land Reform (Amendment) law in 1975
where land owned by public companies in plantation agriculture was nationalized. A
total of 419,100 ha was nationalized during the period from 1972 to 1975 where tea
lands accounted for 39.7%, rubber 17.8%, coconut 11.5% and other land 31%. Most of
these lands were vested with the two state corporations, Janatha Estate Development
Board (JEDB) and State Plantation Corporation (SPC). In 1988 the government
established Provincial Councils under the 13th amendment to the constitution and certain
administrative functions were devolved. These include certain functions of the Land
Commissioner’s Department and the extension services of the Department of
Agriculture.
Forestry perspective
With all these legislation, when the land use is viewed from the forestry
perspective, the forest cover has been declining throughout the years. The forest cover
which was 90% during 1900 when the population was 3.5 m declined to 50% in 1953
with increase of population to 8 m and further reduced to 23% in 1982 when the
population was 15 m. At present the forest cover is estimated as less than 20% with a
population of 20 m. This is much less than the world average of 31% forest cover but
slightly above the estimated forest cover in the South East Asia. Out of the present
forest cover in the country, only 9% is in watershed areas showing the importance of
relocating them to environmentally sensitive regions.

MAPA ET AL. 17th WCSS, 14-21 August 2002, Thailand
974-6
Land use planning
Any person travelling through the country could observe the unsatisfactory nature
of the present land use in Sri Lanka. Encroachment into natural forests, intentional
burning of forest plantations, shifting cultivation, abandoned tea lands and cultivation of
tobacco and vegetables in high elevations are major reasons for such status. In contrast,
few examples of sound land use as the Kandyan Forest Gardens, with multi-story
canopies from a mixture of trees where the runoff and soil erosion is minimal even at
50% slopes, and few well managed tea, rubber and coconut plantations could be seen
Out of these the most sensitive are parts of the wet and intermediate zones occurring in
the upper Mahaweli catchment.
At present land use planning in the country is done in ad-hoc basis. The Land Use
Division (LUD) of the Irrigation Department was setup in 1958 for conducting soil
surveys, land capability mapping and land suitability evaluation. Subsequently, the
Land and Water Use Division of the Agriculture Department was setup for research in
soil conservation and land management systems. In 1979 the Land Use Policy Planning
Division (LUPPD) was set up under the Ministry of Lands and District Land Use
Planning Committees (DLUPC) were set up at each district consisting of 10-12 district
level officers. More recently a District Land Use Planner was appointed to each district
who is supposed to coordinate planning at national, district and local levels. According
to the indicative land use mapping by the LUPPD land is classified two major
categories as areas of existing intensive land use and areas of underutilized land.
Future strategies
The Land Commission (1985) reported that the optimal utilization of land and
water resources on a sustainable basis constitute one of the fundamental questions of the
land policy for the future. The formulation of future land use policies must be based on
sound reasoning supported by a reliable and systematized data base in an island wise
basis. The major limitation for land use planning in Sri Lanka is the non-availability of
sa data base, where the planners still depend on the Census of Agriculture conducted in
1982. In this respect the Soil Science Society of Sri Lanka has completed
characterization and classification of the Wet Zone soils of Sri Lanka including 28
bench mark sites (Mapa et al., 1999). The study of the soils of the Intermediate Zone of
Sri Lanka is completed with characterization of 45 bench mark sites (Nayakekorale and
Mapa, 2001) and the work in the Dry Zone is now in progress. This data base will be
used for land use planning for the entire country for the future. One of the challenging
issues for the future will be the determination of the optimum forest cover and the exact
locations in the catchments. Part of the most fertile lands now under forest should be
released for agriculture after harvesting, relocating forests in the steep slopes and areas
above a certain elevation.
One of the major reasons for present land degradation is soil erosion by water. New
amendments should be included in the Soil Conservation Act to prevent cultivation of
annual crops in lands steeper than 30% and the lands above the 1,500 meter contour. As
it is shown that a major part of soil erosion is from road and building construction sites,
these lands also should be included as sensitive areas in the soil conservation act.

MAPA ET AL. 17th WCSS, 14-21 August 2002, Thailand
974-7
Acknowledgements
The authors wish to thank the SRICANSOL project, which is the twinning project
between the Canadian Society of Soil Science and Soil Science Society of Sri Lanka for
the assistance provided in preparation of this paper and using the data base.
References
Anonymous. 1985. Land Commission Report. Sessional Paper, Govt. Press, Sri Lanka.
349 p.
Census of Agriculture. 1988. Agricultural Statistics of Sri Lanka, Dept. of Census and
Statistics. 105 p.
Dimantha, S. 1992. Soil scientists should lead in scientific land use planning in Sri
Lanka. 8:1-27.
Land Commission. 1985. First interim report, Sessional paper No. 1, 1986.
Land Reform Law. 1972. Department of Government Printing, Colombo.
Hunting Survey Corporation. 1961. Report by Ceylon Land Use and Forestry Center,
Toronto, Canada.
Mapa, R.B., S. Somasiri and S. Nagarajah. 1999. Soils of the Wet Zone of Sri Lanka:
Morphology, Characterization and Classification. Survodaya Vishwaleka Press. 181 p.
Nayakekorale, H.B. 1998. Human induced soil degradation status in Sri Lanka. J. Soil
Sci. Soc. Sri Lanka. 10:1-35.
Nayakekorale, H.B. and R.B. Mapa. 2001. Soils of the Intermediate Zone of Sri Lanka.
Morphology, Characterization and Classification. Survodaya Vishwaleka Press. (in
press).
Somasekaran, T. 1988. The National Atlas of Sri Lanka. Survey Department, Sri Lanka.
142 p.
Somasekaran, T. 1996. Facts about Our Land, Arjuna Consulting Company, Ltd.
Dehiwala.