A Cultural Tension
A cultural contradiction sits at the centre of this issue. Elephants are sacred- they lead religious processions and are mourned as national treasures. Yet in the same country, wild elephants are shot, electrocuted, poisoned, or killed with jaw-bombs as crop losses devastate livelihoods. This tension between reverence and resentment is not abstract. It is deeply personal.
A moving portrayal of this shared suffering appears in the Sri Lankan musical-cinematic piece“ ZD8” by Charitha Attalage and Kasun Edirisinghe( available on YouTube). The story, rooted in lived experience from a Dry Zone village, depicts how fragile infrastructure, governance gaps, and environmental stress culminate in the deaths of both humans and elephants. It reflects documented realities: irrigation failures, water contamination, policy neglect, and the shared vulnerability of people and wildlife at development frontiers.
A Climate Justice Issue
The consultancy review argues that HEC in Sri Lanka is not a behavioural anomaly but a structural outcome of development choices. Large irrigation schemes, including the Mahaweli Programme, reshaped landscapes and placed settlements within former elephant corridors. Current responses, fencing, drives and translocation are reactive, cornering elephants over redesigning shared landscapes
What makes this a climate justice issue is not only ecology, but inequality.
Rural communities living near protected areas bear disproportionate costs of national development and climate volatility. At the same time, Sri Lanka records one of the highest annual elephant death rates in the region. Both sides lose.
Rethinking Coexistence
Reducing this conflict to socially and ecologically sustainable levels requires more than stronger fences. It requires corridor protection, participatory land-use planning, accountable governance, and integration of conflict mitigation into national development policy. It requires recognising that coexistence is not optional- it is already happening, just not yet in a way that is safe or fair.
A young girl pays her respects during the funeral rites of Nadungamuwa Raja, a sacred domesticated elephant. Source: News. cn( 2021)
Sri Lanka’ s story carries a wider lesson. As infrastructure expands and climate stress deepens across biodiversity-rich regions worldwide, the question is no longer whether humans and wildlife will share space.
The question is How.
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