At the initiative of FAO, officers from the Ministry of Agriculture of Sri Lanka in 2014 participated in meetings and conferences on Globally Important Agricultural Heritage Systems (GIAHS). As a result, the Ministry of Agriculture formed a Technical Working Group under the chairmanship of the Additional Secretary for Agriculture Technology to work towards declaring a GIAHS for Sri Lanka. This initiative of the Ministry of Agriculture paved the way to obtain funds from FAO through the Technical Cooperation Programm (TCP) to develop a proposal to declare Palugasweva cascaded tank village system in the dry zone of Sri Lanka, as a GIAHS and to formulate a dynamic conservation (DC) plan to conserve the system.

As an outcome, the first proposal document and the DC plan has been sent to the GIAHS secretariat on 9 March 2016 with the endorsement from the Ministry of Agriculture. A field mission to the site was also conducted by one of the experts from the GIAHS secretariat (Prof Min Qingwen) from 19 to 23 December 2016. The objective of the field mission was to collect information on the site to verify that the proposal document accurately reflects the situation of the site, in particular, in the relevance to the five GIAHS selection criteria. Based on the expert’s observations, the proposal was revised and resubmitted to the GIAHS Secretariat in January 2017.

The agriculture being practiced in the CTVS is well knitted and inseparable with their century old culture. Specific folklore, folk song, beliefs, rituals, traditional festivals, practices and traditional crafts are still in existence with this community. The tank cascade itself is an evidence of the long practiced land and water conservation and management practices. The current state of the CTVS is no longer in pristine form, but the system is very much serviceable and restorable. Since the site is located in the midst of the cultural triangle of Sri Lanka, it will definitely become an attractive destination for tourists. The CTVS once restored would exhibit the agricultural heritage with its unique features to demonstrate the sustainable agro-society, once flourished over the dry zone of Sri Lanka.

There are four key impacts expected as a result of declaration of the CTVS as a GIAHS. They are:

1        Sustainable conservation of the cascaded tank-village system;

2        Increase in income of the community in the declared site;

3        The potential replication of the good practices to be developed in areas declared as GIAHS in other cascades in the dry zone as well as formulation of policies that would enable such spread; and

4        Improved global awareness of the natural and man-made attraction in Sri Lanka.

Site Level work as contributed by the Government of Sri Lanka includes;

1        Renovation (de-silting) of the Udakadawala tank in the proposed GIAHS site by the Department of Agrarian Services;

2        Planting of 4,000 forest trees along the upstream tree belts (Gasgommana) of the tanks, as supported by the Ministry of Mahaweli Development and Environment;

3        Coordination and operational support from the Ministry of Agriculture, Palugasweva Divisional Secretariat.