Financial Mechanism and Resources

A case of an eco-mango festival in Sri Lanka.

Sri Lanka being a biodiversity hotspot, people have been employing human labor on ecosystem for its conservation for innumerable time. In Sri Lanka resources mobilization for biodiversity projects and programmes are mainly public sector funded and donor driven. Project rationales are more biased towards the supply side. On demand side local communities aspirations were not considered. It was a long felt need to adopt policy tools to mainstream conservation sentiments of Indigenous People and Local Communities (IPLC) into biodiversity agenda of the country. 

Sri Lankan local community comprised of custodian farmers livestock keepers etc. Being in the tropics, Sri Lanka blessed with favorable climate and other requirements for life to sustain with rich diversity. However, with the results of the green revolution, diversity in the farm lands were reduced remarkably and resulted irreversible loss of associated traditional indigenous knowledge and practices.

Mango was selected for this policy experiment as a common and well known fruit in Sri Lanka. New tool was introduced to celebrate seasonal availability and as a means of thanks giving to nature/prakruthi which was a custom of the local Sinhala community. The Biodiversity Secretariat of Sri Lanka introduced this novel and pioneering Sri Lankan community based tool known as   “Eco-mango Festival” Coupling with the peak availability of mangoes during season, cross sectional visits were made to collect available mangoes in the area. Mangoes were collected mainly on mutual exchange basis. “Mango and other fruit barter” was practiced.


The first festival was held in May 2009 at the biodiversity Secretariat which displayed over fifty mango eco-types with the participation of over sixty participants from local community. A questionnaire based survey was done to explore the mango literacy; an attitudinal survey was also done to identify most effective conservation tools. Seed sharing was done as a conservation mechanism.

 

Collective agro biodiversity identification, participatory varietal selection participatory fruit based characterization, mapping and documentation activity in Sri Lanka.  Further mother plants of the promising mango types were identified.


Sui generis system of fruit characterization and identification and naming was done. Local traditional knowledge, culinary recipes, traditional medicinal uses, folk lore and ritualistic relations and uses was documented. 
During the policy research it was identified, festivals as a participatory tool addressing the need of the community which is self complementary with other tools, is cost effective and efficient and leading to “Self – actualization” of people assuring sustainability in conservation. Festivals play an integral role in bringing ethnoecology methods, traditional knowledge, and community led conservation practices to the forefront of the country’s conservation policy. Festivals exemplify how to place a ‘communication interface’ in the hands of local stewards of biocultural diversity through which they can transfer and receive knowledge. This helps local people to exchange information with the scientific community, assert their traditional rights, promote diversity and provide evidence of responsible stewardship across and between generations, build bridges with other stakeholders, and affect policy making which help sustain the conservation and awareness of fauna and flora in the country as a whole.

An initiative is under way to develop “Hela Mango Bio cultural Protocol”. The Biodiversity Secretariat is planning an initiate to map Collective Bio-cultural Heritage associated with Mangoes and formulate a collective mechanism for strategic resources mobilization as a means of Local Exchange Trading System (LETS) for meeting the three objectives of the CBD.