Colombo skyline from Mount Lavinia. Source: Benjamin Brown
Early in October 2018, the latest IPCC report issued a stark warning, urging ‘rapid, far-reaching and unprecedented changes in all aspects of society’ within the next twelve years to avert climate breakdown. Rising sea levels, flooding, drought, and other extreme weather events are liable to compound the effects of poverty and inequality globally. Yet in the Sri Lankan capital Colombo, local communities and civil society groups watch with trepidation as land is reclaimed from the Indian Ocean, in preparation for the construction of a new Port City.
The project is one of post-war Sri Lanka's mega-infrastructure development plans, aiming to make Colombo a regional financial hub and “world class” destination for South Asia. However, with debts of $17 billion accrued over the past decade, Sri Lanka finds itself in a position of ‘handicapped sovereignty’, owing large sums to international creditors, including the west and China. The immediate consequences of the Port City project are felt largely by coastal fishing communities. However, it also damages the country's fragile marine environment and affects the water table due to quarrying rock from the island’s interior. Yet proponents have disregarded these impacts, promising a ‘sustainable city’ and offering bland reassurances that neglect the debt burden, ailing infrastructure and poor environmental quality already shouldered by Colombo’s citizens.
