2016 Sep 8
by Ridmi Upeksha
Sri Lanka, better known as ‘The pearl’ of the Indian Ocean is an environmental miracle that was created for the humanity to appreciate and enjoy its beauty, serenity and resources. Sri Lanka is a topical island that’s filled with extraordinary sceneries and beautiful beaches that you can never get tired of. If you are a beach lover, each time you go to one of your favorite beaches, it will feel like the first time you’ve been there, the beauty and the feel of these beaches are absolutely indescribable. But now if you go to one of your favorite beaches in the southern coastline of Sri Lanka is it the same case? Is it the same beach that you’ve been to 10 years ago?
Southern coastline of Sri Lanka, a beach collective of blue waters and light brown sandy shores has now started to become beaches with no shore at all. A well aware topic -the Unawatuna beach erosion has now gone off the reach of most of our ears because it takes a lot of work to address the issue and a very handful of efforts are being made to strategize and protect the beaches. Unawatuna beach is still being abused and polluted at a very high rate, and no one seems to be paying much attention to it. Unawatuna beach used to be a paradise and a place of vacation which now has turned into a beach strewn with garbage and stacked up with motor oil residue instead of the expected natural sandy brown beach.
Moving further away from Unawatuna to Jungle Beach a very famous hide out spot for sun bathing, vacationing and chilling, a place you cannot miss if you are on the southern coastline. A place where you get to do a bit of walking through a jungle to finally reach the ultimate sandy soothing beach you were looking for. A very popular and a beautiful beach, which now has turned into a place filled with scattered garbage heaps across the pathways and insides of both new and old Jungle beaches. Mostly when the locals come to these two beaches for vacation the polythene covers, empty alcohol bottles, lunch packet covers that they carry are just being dumped all over the place with zero consideration about later consequences. When you take a stroll through the jungle beach stretch you will not smell the ocean breeze but a dreadful garbage smell all over the place ruining the whole vibe of enjoying the natural beauty that surrounds you. A wonderful environmental creation – Unawatuna, Jungle beach is being ruined because of sleazy human activities which has now turned into a threat to the whole bio diversity of the area as well and will be even a bigger threat to humans themselves in another 10 years if this current situation continues.
(Picture take at Jungle Beach on August 29th, 2016)
Since the local and international travelers are now moving further away from Unawatuna towards the inner southern coastline areas such as Koggala, now new signs of coastal erosion and growing environmental pollution patterns can be spotted easily around those areas. Koggala beach which used to be of clear brown sand and clear shores is now slowly being turned in to a beach with scattered plastic covers, bottles all over the places, and a few spots on the same beach where there are small heaps of garbage are piled up.
Human activities have affected the environment in Sri Lanka so much now whichever the beach you step on to has been polluted to some extent. The case of southern coastline pollution is mainly growing because of most of its visitors does not seem to understand or appreciate the true beauties of our nature. Nature is there to adore and to be protect so that it can be re used for all of us to enjoy for a longer period of time.
If a person is dumping garbage wherever she or he feels like it, it’s purely a personal choice that person is making and whoever it is should rightfully be punished for his crimes against nature. It might feel like a small mistake at the beginning but once you get used to it, it will not feel like anything at all later on. Once someone else sees what this person does, they will tend to do the same because now they get the chance to justify their actions pointing at the others, ‘if he can do it why can’t I?
The need to care, and the need to feel the depth of the actions we take is not an ability most of us possess. Even if someone does not possess that ability by nature, it’s not a hard thing to develop and own one. It’s only a matter of time that we lose all these natural beauties that’s there in our country if we don’t pay attention to it and act cautiously to preserve them. We might not feel that our environment plays a huge role in coexistence of our lives as much until something really bad hit the whole country or the world. It could be hard to value and adore something that you do not physically own, but when it comes to saving the environment it’s your duty to the humanity, country, and the nature to do so.
Current pollution rates in the southern coastline must be immediately looked at to take needful actions to decrease those rates. Save what’s yours! And save it today!
