200-meter high Diyaluma Falls, two kilometres from Koslanda
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200-meter high Diyaluma Falls, two kilometres from Koslanda
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Modern sociology has coined a term "ethno-development" that places culture at the center of rural development planning in which indigenous or traditional culture - technologies, knowledge, organizational skills, and talents - can be engaged for effective sustainable development. Sustainable Development has created high-value interaction between developed and developing areas in many regions of the world through increased communication, innovative trade relations and political alliances that transcend national boundaries and regions.
Sri Lanka is just entering the Information Age characterized by rapidly evolving technology and globalization. Indigenous cultures - caught between 'assimilation' into the global mainstream and retaining the traditional values of their way of life – are discovering the demand for what the futurologist Naisbitt calls "high-tech, high-touch". That is, as the pace of change speeds up, people all over the world are turning to objects and experiences associated with traditional value systems as a way of grounding themselves.
The exposure of developed country inhabitants to traditional values, from the point of view of people living in these traditional environments, is a by-product of their traditional way of living, that both helps to preserve values by teaching them and to manage change. Cultural memory is the key, since sustainable development utilizes and revalues indigenous knowledge about crops, plants, the environment, appropriate technology, art, social organization, and language.
In Sri Lanka the Sinhala word for development sangvardana means much more than growth-oriented consumerism. The word portrays life as a pilgrimage with wisdom as the objective and true development the growth of the whole person. Living Heritage is creating a special place at Koslanda for sangvardana to take place, based on the conviction that the environmental focus must involve the social and cultural environments in close association with the physical environment.
