It is indeed a shame that, despite being an island nation with a bountiful ocean around us, Sri Lanka has not adequately invested in marine and ocean sciences over the years. With 75 years of ‘Independence’ in our back-view mirror, consecutive governments and national leadership have failed to fully grasp Sri Lanka’s maritime potential. As such, Sri Lanka today, is at the mercy of regional and extra regional giants to study, map, and review and understand her own maritime domain.

For small island states like Sri Lanka, marine science research is a vital necessity. The oceans are our frontier. It has valuable implications for national food and resource security, employment and energy security as well. Needless to say, such research has a direct impact on national strategic objectives. However, Sri Lanka remains largely blind in marine research and marine domain awareness. One of the key reasons for this monumental shortcoming is the lack of ‘maritime mindfulness’, which is particularly lacking in the policy-making community, in the bureaucracy, and in academia. Unfortunately, it is safe to say that Sri Lanka is a land of ‘land lovers’ and few take to sea or understand it. This lack of maritime mindfulness, leads to policymakers charting a strategic island’s future with, essentially blind to what should be our most important domain, and frontier.

The gap in policy also means the regulatory process of our oceans and subsea resources are also in a chaotic state. As made evident by the MT New Diamond tanker fire incident and the disastrous MV X-Press Pearl incident, Sri Lanka completely lacks a streamlined framework to deal with maritime crisis, pollution and has woefully inadequate capabilities to effectively control such situations. The outdated legislative structure and poorly-managed response agencies and regulators, is also a clear indication of why Sri Lanka is decades behind many other states in ‘maritime mindfulness’. The fact that Sri Lanka, sitting next to one of the biggest shipping lanes in the world, which also is a key petroleum supply artery to the East, did not have effective maritime emergency response, firefighting, pollution and oil spill control during the MT New Diamond and MV X-Press Pear disaster’s, should be a wakeup call for Sri Lankans to take maritime affairs seriously. Sri Lankan policy makers should strongly consider building up sovereign capacity to address key maritime threats and challenges, as they are likely to repeat. Yes, Sri Lanka can’t deal with every crisis alone, the magnitude of them is too big for any one country to do so, especially small nation states. However, Sri Lanka must have a robust sovereign capacity given our location and the risks involved.

The failure to understand and create policy, and build capacity in the maritime domain, especially in maritime sciences, has left Sri Lanka at a serious disadvantage. The lack of policies and understanding also leads to local academia struggling to conduct research, and find funding for such activities. Therefore, many universities have little choice to take up any foreign offers for collaborative research in marine and ocean sciences. The recent controversy over the proposed visit of the Chinese marine survey vessel, Shi Yan 6, and the continued visit by such vessels for ‘joint research’ purposes, also leaves the Sri Lankan Government walking a tight-rope balancing act with security conscious India. It must be noted that Sri Lanka had to rely on India again to map the approaches to Colombo port in the wake of the X-Press Pearl wreck tragedy. If Sri Lanka had, over the decades, built up sovereign capacity for marine and ocean sciences, with a robust hydrographic and oceanographic capability, local academia and the Government would not need to rely on foreign vessels, systems to carry out most of the research which is necessary.   

The Government’s frustration on such matters as Shi Yan-6 is evident, but they have themselves to blame. It is because the State has failed to provide state patronage for an important field of science. Further, the lack of updated maritime and airspace regulatory processes, and lack of transparency, makes Sri Lanka responding to concerns raised by others, challenging. The status quo, comes as Sri Lanka is poised to take over the chairmanship of the Indian Ocean Rim Association, an important regional organisation for the Indian Ocean, as there are not many regional bodies which all stakeholders gather at. And, during a time that the Government wants to build a ‘blue economy’. If Sri Lanka really wants to learn lessons from the past, it should take our maritime frontier and the science which is required to learn more about it and predict it, seriously. Sri Lanka needs to invest in sovereign maritime capability.