Abstract:
Sri Lanka as a third world country carries out a number of development projects
catering to the livelihood of people. Those development projects face a variety of
ecological limitations due to their continuous counteraction to the increasing
development crises. There have been many mass movements that emerged against
the environmental crisis questioning the sustainability of certain development
activities. Eppawala mass movement against privatization of phosphate mine,
protest against the construction of Kandalama Hotel, the collective actions against
Upper Kothmale Hydro Electricity Power Station and Nurochcholai mass activism
against the planned coal power plant are some of the environmental movements that
had a powerful impact on those development projects. The main aim of this study is
to conduct an empirical sociological study on the Nurochcholai mass activism in
order to understand the underlying social factors and forces in relation to
environmental movements in Sri Lanka.
The factors such as livelihood vulnerability, religious leadership and cultural
identity were identified as the driving forces behind the Nurochcholai movement.
The peasants at the grass roots level could be highly concerned about the life
supporting nature of the ecological system than on purely ecological factors. The
anticipated livelihood vulnerability due to the proposed coal power plant was the
major factor that was instrumental for the forces to mobilize people to act on crowd
sentiments against the coal power plant. Since the grass roots environmental actions
in Nurochcholai almost entirely are based on livelihood vulnerability and not on
romantic or ideological views of the environment, this study attempts to understand
Nurochcholai within a new perspective of environmentalism that could be named
"livelihood Environmentalism".
