TVE Asia Pacific (TVEAP) is saddened by the sudden death of Sri Lankan environmental activist, educator and communicator Piyal Parakrama.

Piyal, who died of a heart attack on 3 March 2010, was a long-standing friend and supporter of TVEAP. He has been an active participant or resource person in various national and regional level workshops organised by TVEAP during the past decade.

For a short period in the late 1990s, he also served as Project Officer of the Sri Lanka Environmental Television Project (SLETP), an educational media project initiated by TVEAP with Sri Lankan partners. His communications skills were invaluable in rendering a number of international environmental films into Sinhala. More than a dozen years later, some films are still being used for awareness, education and training purposes.

At the time of his death, Piyal was the Executive Director of the Centre for Environmental and Nature Studies, a non-profit group. He was associated with a number of other organizations, including the Nature Conservation Group and the Young Zoologists Association of Sri Lanka – where he was a volunteer for 30 years. He also worked as a consultant to various state and academic institutions.

Piyal’s special interests were biodiversity and water resources. Piyal became a full time activist after studying biology at the Lumumba Friendship University in Russia from 1983 to 1986. He had a deep knowledge and understanding of traditional natural management practices in Sri Lanka, especially in relation to water and agriculture.

In search of viable solutions for entrenched conservation problems, Piyal collaborated with scientists, educators, journalists and grassroots activists. Some eco-protests grew into sustained campaigns. While environmentalists ultimately haven’t block development projects, their agitations helped increase environmental and public health safeguards.

Piyal’s knowledge-based advocacy was strengthened by his sustained collaborations with the media. He was a freelance journalist, contributing opinion essays regularly to newspapers, and a popular guest on radio and TV talk shows. He was also a trusted source of news and opinions for many journalists.

“Given our common interests in development issues and the media, Piyal and I moved in partly overlapping circles,” recalls Nalaka Gunawardene, TVEAP’s Director and CEO. “Our paths crossed frequently, and over the years we shared many public platforms, newspaper space and broadcast airtime.”

Nalaka adds in a personal tribute to Piyal: “I was always impressed (and even envious) of his command of Sinhala: his was a friendly style, informed and idiomatic without being excessively technocratic or legalistic. Piyal could deliver a coherent ‘sound bite’ to be used by a broadcast journalist, and also speak at length on the same topic. Not many activists or academics can manage this feat.”

The last occasion Piyal collaborated with TVEAP was in mid 2008, when he joined an hour-long TV debate as part of the Sri Lanka 2048 series. The show, co-produced by TVEAP and MTV Channel (Private) Limited in partnership with IUCN, the International Union for Conservation of Nature, discussed the various choices and trade-offs that had to be made today to create a more sustainable Sri Lanka over the next 40 years.

Piyal could have spoken authoritatively on several topics covered in the 10-part series, but TVEAP invited him to the debate on managing freshwater. We reproduce below the full broadcast debate as a tribute to Piyal Parakrama.

Sri Lanka 2048: Debate on Freshwater Management part 1 of 4 (11 mins)

Sri Lanka 2048: Debate on Freshwater Management part 2 of 4 (17 mins)

Sri Lanka 2048: Debate on Freshwater Management part 3 of 4 (9 mins)

Sri Lanka 2048: Debate on Freshwater Management part 4 of 4 (12 mins)

Photographs by TVEAP Image Archive