Features
In the Heart of the Amazon: COP 30 and the fate of the Planet
My recent visit to Brazil coincided partly with the Conference of the Parties (COP) 30, the 30th United Nations Climate Conference in Belém. Although I did not attend COP 30, I was very fortunate to visit the Amazon. It was both awe-inspiring and humbling to experience —even briefly—the mystery and stillness of nature, and the ebb and flow of life in the Amazon: the largest tropical rainforest in the world, sustained by the ever-flowing Amazon River, the largest and widest river on Earth.
The magnificent forest, the river, and its tributaries, such as the black-water Rio Negro, teem with countless interdependent species. The great Samaúma—the “tree of life,” or giant kapok tree—stands tall above innumerable other trees, vines, and plants. Many trees provide homes for birds and other animals that build their nests high among the branches or near the roots. Sloths do not build nests; instead, they spend their entire lives in the forest canopy, hanging upside down from branches while resting or sleeping.
In contrast, capuchin and squirrel monkeys leap from tree to tree in search of food, while birds—from the tiniest short-tailed pygmy tyrant to the colorful red-crested, green, and black Amazon kingfishers—flit from branch to branch, each awaiting its own prey. As night falls, the beautiful white owl-like great potoo emerges and sits patiently, seemingly forever, waiting for its turn to hunt.
In the river, silvery flying fish—sometimes in droves—leap from the water to catch insects, while gray and pink dolphins bob up and down, chasing fish or simply playing. Along the banks, proud egrets and fierce spectacled and black caimans lie in wait for their prey. Overhead, flocks of birds, including parakeets, fill the sky with song as vultures descend to feed on the remains of fallen animals below.
Humans have also lived in the Amazon for tens of thousands of years, in close symbiosis with other species, hunting in the forest and fishing in the river for their survival. Petroglyphs—carvings of human and animal figures, along with abstract shapes etched into rocks along the Amazon River—speak of their deep respect for nature and their ways of communicating with one another. Even today, many of the indigenous communities who inhabit the Amazon remain devoted to protecting Mother Earth, upholding their eco-centric values and traditional ways of life.
There are also the river people (ribeirinhos), many of mixed indigenous and Portuguese descent, living along the Amazon River—often in floating homes or houses built on stilts. Their livelihoods and cultures are deeply intertwined with the river and forest, making the protection of the Amazon essential to their survival.
The Amazon lost an estimated 54.2 million hectares of forest—over 9% of its total area—between 2001 and 2020, an expanse roughly the size of France. The Brazilian Amazon, which makes up 62% of the rainforest’s territory, was the most affected, followed by Bolivia, Peru, and Colombia. Along with deforestation, the Amazon is estimated to lose 4,000 to 6,000 plant and animal species each year.
COP 30
At the opening of the COP 30 Conference in Belém, Luiz Inácio “Lula” da Silva, the President of Brazil pointed out that concrete climate action is possible and that deforestation in the Amazon has been halved just in the past two years. He declared that the “era of fine speeches and good intentions is over” and that Brazil’s COP 30 will be a ‘COP of Truth and Action’, “COPs cannot be mere showcases of good ideas or annual gatherings for negotiators. They must be moments of contact with reality and of effective action to tackle climate change.”
President da Silva also emphasised that Brazil is a global leader in biofuel production—renewable energy derived from organic materials such as plants, algae, and waste—stressing that “a growth model based on fossil fuels cannot last.” Indeed, at COP 30, the future of the world’s tropical forests, vital ecosystems, and the shared climate of humanity and other species is at stake.
“Truth and Action”
Notwithstanding President da Silva’s optimistic pronouncements at Belém, troubling developments continue on the climate front in Brazil and around the world. In preparation for COP 30, the Brazilian government—along with India, Italy, and Japan—launched an ambitious initiative in October 2025: the “Belém 4x” pledge, which aims to quadruple global sustainable fuel use by 2035. This goal is projected to more than double current biofuel consumption. However, environmentalists have expressed concern that a massive expansion of biofuel production, if undertaken without strong safeguards, could accelerate deforestation, degrade land and water resources, harm ecosystems, and threaten food security—particularly as crops such as soy, sugarcane, and palm oil compete for land between energy and food production.
Just days before COP30, the Brazilian government granted the state-run oil company Petrobras a license to drill for oil near the mouth of the Amazon River. The government, including Minister for the Environment Marina da Silva, has defended the move, claiming that the project would help finance Brazil’s energy transition and help achieve its economic development goals.
Environmentalists have criticized the decision, accusing the government of promoting fossil fuel expansion and worsening global warming. They warn that drilling off the coast of the world’s largest tropical rainforest—a crucial carbon sink—poses a serious threat to biodiversity and indigenous communities in the Amazon region.
According to environmental activists, in the Amazon, “31 million hectares of Indigenous Peoples’ territories are already overlapped by oil and gas blocks, with an additional 9.8 million hectares threatened by mining concessions.”
Moreover, a controversial four-lane highway, Avenida Liberdade, built in Belém in preparation for the COP30 climate summit, is being defended by the Brazilian government as necessary infrastructure for the city’s growing population. Environmentalists and some locals are alarmed that clearing more than 100 hectares of protected Amazon Rainforest to build the road will accelerate deforestation, harm wildlife, and undermine the climate goals of the COP summit.
The onus of protecting the Amazon Rainforest—often called “the lungs of the planet”— cannot rest on Brazil alone; it is a shared responsibility of all humanity. Numerous studies show that the world can thrive without fossil and biofuels by adopting alternative renewable energy sources such as solar, wind, and hydroelectric power.
The global order, led by the United States and other Western nations, bears primary responsibility for the climate and environmental crises, as well as for deepening global inequality. Emerging powers from the Global South—particularly the BRICS nations, including Brazil—are now called to move beyond rhetoric and take concrete action. As President Lula da Silva himself has stated, COP 30 presents a critical opportunity to move decisively in that direction.
Negotiators and policymakers at COP 30 must take firm, principled moral action—resisting pressure from the fossil fuel lobby and prioritizing the interests of the planet and its people over short-term, profit-driven growth.
Asoka Bandarage is the author of Women, Population and Global Crisis: A Politico-Economic Analysis (Zed Books, 1997), Sustainability and Well-Being: The Middle Path to Environment, Society and the Economy (Palgrave MacMillan, 2013) and numerous other publications on global political economy and the environment including “The Climate Emergency And Urgency of System Change” (2023) and ‘Existential Crisis, Mindfulness and the Middle Path to Social Action’ (2025). She serves on the Steering Committee of the Interfaith Moral Action on Climate.
by Dr. Asoka Bandarage ✍️
by Kaushalya Perera
Time has, by and large, stood still in the business of academic staff recruitment to state universities. Qualifications have proliferated and evolved to be more interdisciplinary, but our selection processes and evaluation criteria are unchanged since at least the late 1990s. But before I delve into the problems, I will describe the existing processes and schemes of recruitment. The discussion is limited to UGC-governed state universities (and does not include recruitment to medical and engineering sectors) though the problems may be relevant to other higher education institutions (HEIs).
How recruitment happens currently in SL state universities
Academic ranks in Sri Lankan state universities can be divided into three tiers (subdivisions are not discussed).
* Lecturer (Probationary)
– recruited with a four-year undergraduate degree. A tiny step higher is the Lecturer (Unconfirmed), recruited with a postgraduate degree but no teaching experience.
* A Senior Lecturer can be recruited with certain postgraduate qualifications and some number of years of teaching and research.
* Above this is the professor (of four types), which can be left out of this discussion since only one of those (Chair Professor) is by application.
State universities cannot hire permanent academic staff as and when they wish. Prior to advertising a vacancy, approval to recruit is obtained through a mind-numbing and time-consuming process (months!) ending at the Department of Management Services. The call for applications must list all ranks up to Senior Lecturer. All eligible candidates for Probationary to Senior Lecturer are interviewed, e.g., if a Department wants someone with a doctoral degree, they must still advertise for and interview candidates for all ranks, not only candidates with a doctoral degree. In the evaluation criteria, the first degree is more important than the doctoral degree (more on this strange phenomenon later). All of this is only possible when universities are not under a ‘hiring freeze’, which governments declare regularly and generally lasts several years.
Problem type 1
– Archaic processes and evaluation criteria
Twenty-five years ago, as a probationary lecturer with a first degree, I was a typical hire. We would be recruited, work some years and obtain postgraduate degrees (ideally using the privilege of paid study leave to attend a reputed university in the first world). State universities are primarily undergraduate teaching spaces, and when doctoral degrees were scarce, hiring probationary lecturers may have been a practical solution. The path to a higher degree was through the academic job. Now, due to availability of candidates with postgraduate qualifications and the problems of retaining academics who find foreign postgraduate opportunities, preference for candidates applying with a postgraduate qualification is growing. The evaluation scheme, however, prioritises the first degree over the candidate’s postgraduate education. Were I to apply to a Faculty of Education, despite a PhD on language teaching and research in education, I may not even be interviewed since my undergraduate degree is not in education. The ‘first degree first’ phenomenon shows that universities essentially ignore the intellectual development of a person beyond their early twenties. It also ignores the breadth of disciplines and their overlap with other fields.
This can be helped (not solved) by a simple fix, which can also reduce brain drain: give precedence to the doctoral degree in the required field, regardless of the candidate’s first degree, effected by a UGC circular. The suggestion is not fool-proof. It is a first step, and offered with the understanding that any selection process, however well the evaluation criteria are articulated, will be beset by multiple issues, including that of bias. Like other Sri Lankan institutions, universities, too, have tribal tendencies, surfacing in the form of a preference for one’s own alumni. Nevertheless, there are other problems that are, arguably, more pressing as I discuss next. In relation to the evaluation criteria, a problem is the narrow interpretation of any regulation, e.g., deciding the degree’s suitability based on the title rather than considering courses in the transcript. Despite rhetoric promoting internationalising and inter-disciplinarity, decision-making administrative and academic bodies have very literal expectations of candidates’ qualifications, e.g., a candidate with knowledge of digital literacy should show this through the title of the degree!
Problem type 2 – The mess of badly regulated higher education
A direct consequence of the contemporary expansion of higher education is a large number of applicants with myriad qualifications. The diversity of degree programmes cited makes the responsibility of selecting a suitable candidate for the job a challenging but very important one. After all, the job is for life – it is very difficult to fire a permanent employer in the state sector.
Widely varying undergraduate degree programmes.
At present, Sri Lankan undergraduates bring qualifications (at times more than one) from multiple types of higher education institutions: a degree from a UGC-affiliated state university, a state university external to the UGC, a state institution that is not a university, a foreign university, or a private HEI aka ‘private university’. It could be a degree received by attending on-site, in Sri Lanka or abroad. It could be from a private HEI’s affiliated foreign university or an external degree from a state university or an online only degree from a private HEI that is ‘UGC-approved’ or ‘Ministry of Education approved’, i.e., never studied in a university setting. Needless to say, the diversity (and their differences in quality) are dizzying. Unfortunately, under the evaluation scheme all degrees ‘recognised’ by the UGC are assigned the same marks. The same goes for the candidates’ merits or distinctions, first classes, etc., regardless of how difficult or easy the degree programme may be and even when capabilities, exposure, input, etc are obviously different.
Similar issues are faced when we consider postgraduate qualifications, though to a lesser degree. In my discipline(s), at least, a postgraduate degree obtained on-site from a first-world university is preferable to one from a local university (which usually have weekend or evening classes similar to part-time study) or online from a foreign university. Elitist this may be, but even the best local postgraduate degrees cannot provide the experience and intellectual growth gained by being in a university that gives you access to six million books and teaching and supervision by internationally-recognised scholars. Unfortunately, in the evaluation schemes for recruitment, the worst postgraduate qualification you know of will receive the same marks as one from NUS, Harvard or Leiden.
The problem is clear but what about a solution?
Recruitment to state universities needs to change to meet contemporary needs. We need evaluation criteria that allows us to get rid of the dross as well as a more sophisticated institutional understanding of using them. Recruitment is key if we want our institutions (and our country) to progress. I reiterate here the recommendations proposed in ‘Considerations for Higher Education Reform’ circulated previously by Kuppi Collective:
* Change bond regulations to be more just, in order to retain better qualified academics.
* Update the schemes of recruitment to reflect present-day realities of inter-disciplinary and multi-disciplinary training in order to recruit suitably qualified candidates.
* Ensure recruitment processes are made transparent by university administrations.
Kaushalya Perera is a senior lecturer at the University of Colombo.
(Kuppi is a politics and pedagogy happening on the margins of the lecture hall that parodies, subverts, and simultaneously reaffirms social hierarchies.)
This week, too, the spotlight is on an outfit that has gained popularity, mainly through social media.
Last week we had MISTER Band in our scene, and on 10th February, Yellow Beatz – both social media favourites.
Talento is a seven-piece band that plays all types of music, from the ‘60s to the modern tracks of today.
The band has reached many heights, since its inception in 2012, and has gained recognition as a leading wedding and dance band in the scene here.
The members that makeup the outfit have a solid musical background, which comes through years of hard work and dedication
Their portfolio of music contains a mix of both western and eastern songs and are carefully selected, they say, to match the requirements of the intended audience, occasion, or event.
Although the baila is a specialty, which is inherent to this group, that originates from Moratuwa, their repertoire is made up of a vast collection of love, classic, oldies and modern-day hits.
The musicians, who make up Talento, are:
Prabuddha Geetharuchi:
Geilee Fonseka: Dynamic and charismatic vocalist
Prabuddha Geetharuchi: The main man behind the band Talento
(Vocalist/ Frontman). He is an avid music enthusiast and was mentored by a lot of famous musicians, and trainers, since he was a child. Growing up with them influenced him to take on western songs, as well as other music styles. A Peterite, he is the main man behind the band Talento and is a versatile singer/entertainer who never fails to get the crowd going.
Geilee Fonseka (Vocals):
A dynamic and charismatic vocalist whose vibrant stage presence, and powerful voice, bring a fresh spark to every performance. Young, energetic, and musically refined, she is an artiste who effortlessly blends passion with precision – captivating audiences from the very first note. Blessed with an immense vocal range, Geilee is a truly versatile singer, confidently delivering Western and Eastern music across multiple languages and genres.
Chandana Perera (Drummer):
His expertise and exceptional skills have earned him recognition as one of the finest acoustic drummers in Sri Lanka. With over 40 tours under his belt, Chandana has demonstrated his dedication and passion for music, embodying the essential role of a drummer as the heartbeat of any band.
Harsha Soysa:
(Bassist/Vocalist). He a chorister of the western choir of St. Sebastian’s College, Moratuwa, who began his musical education under famous voice trainers, as well as bass guitar trainers in Sri Lanka. He has also performed at events overseas. He acts as the second singer of the band
Udara Jayakody:
(Keyboardist). He is also a qualified pianist, adding technical flavour to Talento’s music. His singing and harmonising skills are an extra asset to the band. From his childhood he has been a part of a number of orchestras as a pianist. He has also previously performed with several famous western bands.
Aruna Madushanka:
(Saxophonist). His proficiciency in playing various instruments, including the saxophone, soprano saxophone, and western flute, showcases his versatility as a musician, and his musical repertoire is further enhanced by his remarkable singing ability.
Prashan Pramuditha:
(Lead guitar). He has the ability to play different styles, both oriental and western music, and he also creates unique tones and patterns with the guitar..
The JJ Twins, the Sri Lankan musical duo, performing in the Maldives, and known for blending R&B, Hip Hop, and Sri Lankan rhythms, thereby creating a unique sound, have come out with a brand-new single ‘Me Mawathe.’
In fact, it’s a very special milestone for the twin brothers, Julian and Jason Prins, as ‘Me Mawathe’ is their first ever Sinhala song!
‘Me Mawathe’ showcases a fresh new sound, while staying true to the signature harmony and emotion that their fans love.
This heartfelt track captures the beauty of love, journey, and connection, brought to life through powerful vocals and captivating melodies.
It marks an exciting new chapter for the JJ Twins as they expand their musical journey and connect with audiences in a whole new way.
Their recent album, ‘CONCLUDED,’ explores themes of love, heartbreak, and healing, and include hits like ‘Can’t Get You Off My Mind’ and ‘You Left Me Here to Die’ which showcase their emotional intensity.
Readers could stay connected and follow JJ Twins on social media for exclusive updates, behind-the-scenes moments, and upcoming releases:
Instagram: http://instagram.com/jjtwinsofficial
TikTok: http://tiktok.com/@jjtwinsmusic
Facebook: http://facebook.com/jjtwinssingers
YouTube: http://youtube.com/jjtwins
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