Unseen Negatives of Human Elephant conflict: Daily News paper article of Kapila Premarathne

Unseen Negatives of Human Elephant conflict: Article published in Daily News paper by  Kapila Premarathne

Unseen conflict of seeing Human Elephant Conflict (HEC)

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armers and elephants are being struggled each other to protect their territory from a couple of decades in Sri Lanka. The struggle is being taken a vast attention on the local News columns frequently due to property damages, crop raiding and injuries. Further, death incidents of both elephants and humans reported frequently showing the severity of the struggle. People’s voice is being raised from decades in search of measures and sustainable solutions. These ongoing arguments emphasize the necessity of a dialogue on mitigation of Human Elephant Conflict (HEC).

Respective government agencies have concerned the issue in to a great extent. However, the implemented mechanisms like electric fencing have not addressed the issue completely. This failure has created many negative impacts on both elephants and humans by today. According to the statistics of the Department of Wildlife Conservation (DWC), a huge losses and damages have been reported annually due to this struggle.

Year	Elephant Death count	Human death count	Property damage incidents	Human Injuries
2008	224	71	684	63
2009	228	50	827	40
2010	227	81	1997	83
2011	255	60	1225	55
2012	250	79	3183	60

Source: Performance Reports : Department of Wildlife Conservation

The department of wild life showed a huge amount of public money has been using for the compensation for the damages annually. This is the known and frequently spoken picture of the study in most of the cases.

However the unseen picture tells something differently yet critically, in this concern, many things can be critically concentrated. If we focus on them, the existing monetary compensation schemes (what we generally speak) may help victims to build their livelihoods in to a certain smaller extent. However, the unseen and uncompensated cost components will lead them to a problematic situation in many ways. In this concern, Cost components like incurred labour and incurred time for the crops and plantations, house buildings would not be considered in the existing compensations. For instant, a significant damage to a mature coconut cultivation that caused by elephants ,which  gives nuts may not be compensated without considering the labour, effort and the incurred lifespan of the farmer. Moreover, the actions that are made on protection of crop lands, adaptation measures and risk mitigating practices on personal desires may not be accounted and will be remained as unseen costs. These unseen costs would be rest upon the shoulders of the individual farmers.

On this backdrop, Monitory compensations purely based on the market values and estimations are smaller than the actual damages. The existing monetary compensation schemes help farmers to build the resilience inadequately and somewhat slowly. A severe shock may take many years to recover with this small compensations and supports. Thus the compensations must be given to cover at least some portion of unseen costs by considering the ideas of victims. Stake holder discussions and farmer centric strategies are needed to be implemented to identify the appropriate compensations. For instance, similar issues have been researched in African countries and have identified the importance of unseen cost components.

Nevertheless, the restoring process after a shock may require some other supports like house building materials, farm equipments, proper coordination, awareness and management. These non monetary supports are also critical even though, the highly liquidize money is mostly preferred by farmers and   frequently offered as a compensation.  

 Development of lands and investments are also risky choices as a result of the perusing conflicts with elephants in areas where struggle exists. Further, it has reduced the land values and created poor markets for real estates. Migration or selling their property in search of new safe habitats has been limited by the conflict itself. Thus, they have trapped in a frame which is uncommon and unseen in generally elsewhere in the Island. All these matters are needed to be uncovered by opening a proper dialogue on behalf of the victims.

The frequent encounters and expectations of such situations could affect badly on the mind sets and reduce the mental freedom what we experience normally in our lives. This fear and unpleasant situations may cause to the disappointment and limited the expectations of farmers. This also has been researched in African countries where similar issues exist .it has been observed that the affected people have poor mental freedom in particular studies.

 Moreover, Farmers’ farm investment decisions have been affected by this phenomenon badly and has resulted poor income opportunities from their factors of production comparing to other farmers who share similar characters. For instance, their decision making criteria has an additional risk component due to elephant encounters in contrast to other farmers. This may result limited selection of crops and combinations. This opportunity cost of selection   would add poor financial returns in comparison to other farmers. Nevertheless, their daily routings have to be planned by considering the unexpected elephant encounters. Therefore,   actions like carrying children to schools in the morning and carrying after school, taking a patient to a hospital in the night times have to perform in a more careful manner with mandatory supervision. These actions may require additional efforts, labour and time than to other rural people elsewhere in the Island. Therefore, in the economic perspective, they have a high cost and time consideration for their day today actions.

When considering the elephants as a resource to a particular area, two parties can be identified clearly that benefited differently at the same time. In contrast, one party is positively benefited because of the presence of elephants. Those are tourist hotel owners and shop owners, especially near the park areas. Due to the highest tourist attraction, those parties are enjoying financial benefits and better-off due to the elephants. On the other hand, farmers are worse-off due to the same group of elephants because of crop raiding and property damages. They experience threats and struggle to live while sacrificing their leisure and happy against elephant threats .This emphasizes the necessity of a proper monetary compensation to the people who take the negative externality of the resource. However, this hidden cost component is not addressed or no measure has taken into concern effectively to distribute the benefits equally yet. Thus it is good to use a proper benefit transfer method such as an additional hotel fee or fund to take care the victims in the corresponding areas. In this regard, the awareness of the all the stakeholders and their mutual understanding is important. Farmers don’t engage or benefited usually from tourism. Thus, opening chances for selling their harvests to hotels or arranging special markets will distribute some benefits to the farmers.  Promoting non agricultural income activities via small industries like handicraft making etc, focusing on tourism may divert their income sources. Such activities   may contribute to change their attitudes towards the elephants in a good direction and reduce   cruelty towards them.

When considering the elephants, they are the opposite side of the same coin. They seek food and drinks when they face a scarcity in the jungle. Especially, it is observed   frequent crop raidings and encounters during the drier seasons. This emphasizes the importance of consideration of the ongoing climate change turbulences when planning elephant conservation mechanisms and farmer adaptation mechanisms. These adaptation mechanisms may require precise weather forecasts or climate information products (CIP). Thus, these actions may have aggregated costs to the society as an example for the research and development of such farmer specific weather information dissemination systems. Nevertheless, individual costs also may result due to certain adaptation practices like irrigation and cultivate crops which have less elephant attraction etc. to avoid perusing risks.

Importantly, some farmer practices also have been observed which causes losses to the farmers themselves, as an example, many farmers have cultivated up to the margin of the protected lands without considering the importance of established buffer zones. Nevertheless, elephants’ favoured crops have been cultivated very close to the electric fence which provides a certain inspiration for the elephants to trespass the fence boundary. These kinds of cultivations are highly vulnerable to damages and losses. Therefore, it can be mentioned clearly that some farmer actions too have contributed to create conflict situations.

Some available protection mechanisms require more public participation (effort) and attention for their successive use. As an example bio fencing process may require more public attention. This Palmyra bio fences are efficient in controlling the elephant trespass the park border. However, certain   actions like uprooting the young Palmyra trees for sending cattle to feed in the jungle prevent the fututure successive role of the fence. In this regard, the cattle owners usually uproot them at seedling stage ignoring its importance. This wastes public money which used in the establishment of the bio fence system and again calls for public money for compensations.

 Some plant species have law elephant attention and inherent dislike .in this regard, fruit plants like lemon and  medicinal plants like Malabar nut (Adhathodavasica) (Sinhalese Pawatta/ Adathoda)  can be cultivated to discourage elephant trespass. These plants help to earn a small income while repealing elephants. These actions need more effort and farmer dedication   because the successes of these things are more farmers depended. These additional actions usually remain as unseen component behind the big picture.

This information was found by a research that conducted in Udawalwe National Park area in 2016. Even though, the research has been carried out in Udawala area, this information and context have a validation to many areas in Sri Lanka where this struggle exists. Moreover, the particular findings fitted with the similar research findings which have undergone especially in the African region also.

Finally, as possible remedial measures, socio economic approaches are important to link with the scientific actions like electric fencing etc. The integration can lead the society towards the seeking sustainable solution. For instance, proper compensation mechanisms that included hidden costs are required as highlighted to build the resilience of those who were affected already. The climate and weather related information gap must be filled with suitable research actions to forecast possible threats early. Social welfare and equal deviance of the benefits from the elephants must ensure among the all the beneficiaries via proper price mechanisms and externality charges. Farmer adaptations to avoid elephant threats by cultivating suitable low attraction crops and possible practices should be promoted to help them. Participatory management approaches like already existing “Gaja mithuro” programme must be promoted along with suitable extension works.    

By Kapila chinthaka

Lecture in Department of Agricultural systems, Faculty of Agriculture, Rajarata University of Sri Lanka