Prime Minister Harini Amarasuriya told the opening of the Global Conscious Food Systems Summit in Bhutan on Tuesday that the answer to the world’s food crisis lies neither in returning to the past nor in forgetting it.

Sri Lanka holds a deep body of food-related knowledge that allowed communities to feed themselves while staying in close relationship with the environment, she said, NewsFirst reported.

The wewa-gama argument

Her central example was Sri Lanka’s wewa-gama, or tank-village, cascade system — the interconnected network of reservoirs built across the dry zone and refined over nearly 2,000 years.

The system was never simply about storing water, Amarasuriya said. It was designed to sustain whole ecosystems: agriculture, home gardens, forests, livestock and rural livelihoods, on the understanding that human prosperity depended on the health of the environment around it.

She cited the principle attributed to King Parakramabahu the Great — that not a single drop of water should be allowed to flow into the sea without first being put to use.

That principle, she argued, reflected more than an interest in irrigation. It treated water as a shared national resource, matched crops to local climate, and ran agriculture, forests, biodiversity and settlements as parts of one interconnected system — stewardship rather than engineering.

The Prime Minister noted that the UN Food and Agriculture Organization has recognised Sri Lanka’s ancient tank-village civilisation as a Globally Important Agricultural Heritage System for its resilience, biodiversity and sustainability. She also pointed to traditional conservation practices that predated sustainability as a policy idea, including fishing methods using baskets with openings wide enough to let young fish escape.

The host’s question

Bhutanese Prime Minister Tshering Tobgay opened with a contradiction rather than a proposal.

The world produces more food than at any point in history and can move it across continents, he said, and yet hundreds of millions of people still go hungry while healthy diets remain out of reach for many families, NewsFirst reported.

“We produce more food than ever before, and yet hundreds of millions of people still go hungry,” he said.

He set out two further contradictions. Agricultural productivity has risen sharply over recent decades, yet many countries continue to degrade the fertile soil, clean water and biodiversity that future production depends on. And the farmers responsible for feeding the world’s population still struggle to earn a decent living.

“Something does not add up,” Tobgay said.

He argued that while science, technology, infrastructure, finance and market access should keep improving output, the global conversation has to move past output alone to a more basic question: what food systems are meant to achieve. Every technology, investment, policy and market decision reflects underlying priorities and values, he said — “this is where consciousness enters the conversation.”

Context

The summit runs in Paro from 31 August to 4 September and is jointly hosted by the Royal Government of Bhutan, the Conscious Food Systems Alliance and the United Nations Development Programme. It is billed as the first global gathering on the role of values, culture and inner transformation in building sustainable food systems.

Amarasuriya’s visit runs from 31 August to 5 September and is the first by a Sri Lankan head of state or government to Bhutan in 16 years, a detail neither Sri Lankan outlet reported at the time of her departure and which came from Bhutan’s foreign ministry. She is also due to meet Tobgay bilaterally.

The cascade system she described is not only heritage. A World Bank-funded programme is currently rehabilitating 296 minor tanks, most of them damaged by Cyclone Ditwah, while a drought has left 612 tanks in Anuradhapura below 5% of capacity. Neither NewsFirst report noted that the model being presented abroad is under strain at home.

Update, September 3: the bilateral meetings are reported, two days on

The bilateral talks flagged above have now been reported — both the meeting with the Prime Minister and a separate audience with Bhutan’s King.

With Prime Minister Tobgay

Amarasuriya met Tobgay in Thimphu on September 1, on the sidelines of the summit, NewsFirst reported two days after the event.

The talks covered education, healthcare, trade, tourism, air connectivity and people-to-people exchanges. The two also exchanged views on sustainable development, good governance, climate action and environmental protection.

Air connectivity is the one item with an obvious practical dimension: there are no direct flights between Colombo and Paro, and Bhutan’s only international airport constrains its inbound tourism.

With King Jigme Khesar Namgyel Wangchuck

Amarasuriya had an audience with King Jigme Khesar Namgyel Wangchuck at the Tashichhodzong on September 2, Ada Derana reported, citing the Prime Minister’s Office. NewsFirst carried the same audience separately later on September 3, and the two accounts agree on every point.

Bhutan expressed interest in drawing on Sri Lanka’s experience and expertise to support its own development priorities. The two sides discussed promoting bilateral investment, including the possibility of establishing an investment zone in Bhutan.

They also discussed demographic pressures facing Bhutan, particularly the increasing emigration of young people and its potential effect on the country’s population and future workforce — a candid subject for a state visit, and one Sri Lanka has its own long experience of. NewsFirst framed this as a shared concern about creating opportunities that keep young people contributing at home.

What has not been reported

An MoU has since been reported from a third bilateral meeting — see the September 4 update. The paragraph below describes the position as it stood on September 3.

No outlet reported any agreement, memorandum or joint statement arising from either meeting, and none gave a timeline for the proposed investment zone or said which sectors it might cover. None said whether air connectivity is under active negotiation or which airlines or authorities are involved. All three reports are summaries of official statements — NewsFirst’s account of the Tobgay meeting is unattributed, and both the Ada Derana and NewsFirst accounts of the royal audience track the Prime Minister’s Office statement — with no independent reporting from Thimphu. Hiru also listed the royal audience on September 3, but its article page was unreachable on both fetch transports, so it is not cited here.

A separate track of the visit, on legal education cooperation between the two countries, was reported the same day.

Update, September 4: a third bilateral, and a planned MoU

A third bilateral meeting from the visit has now been reported, and it is the one that produced a concrete deliverable.

Amarasuriya — in her capacity as Minister of Education, Higher Education and Vocational Education — met Yeezang De Thapa, Bhutan’s Minister for Education and Skills Development, on the summit sidelines on September 2, Ada Derana reported on Friday, citing the Prime Minister’s Media Division.

An MoU and a Joint Working Group

The two sides agreed to begin work towards finalising and signing a Memorandum of Understanding on cooperation in education and vocational training.

They also agreed the MoU could be implemented through a Joint Working Group headed at Secretary level, meeting annually to review progress, identify new areas of cooperation and oversee agreed activities.

That answers the What has not been reported line above, which recorded that no agreement or memorandum had emerged from the visit. It is still a commitment to negotiate rather than a signed instrument: no date, no draft and no signing venue has been reported.

What the MoU would cover

The areas discussed were collaboration between universities and academic institutions, academic and faculty exchanges, joint research and university programmes, training and capacity-building for teachers and educators, and sharing expertise in education and vocational training.

The two ministers also discussed child protection and safeguarding, promoting ethical values among students, and addressing violence against children — a notably specific item for a bilateral of this kind.

Bhutanese students in Sri Lankan medical faculties

The most concrete proposal concerns places for Bhutanese students at Sri Lankan universities, with particular emphasis on Dentistry, Medicine (MBBS) and allied health disciplines such as Physiotherapy, along with postgraduate study in medical and health sciences.

Sri Lanka’s medical faculties are heavily oversubscribed domestically, and no report says whether these would be fee-levying places, how many are envisaged, or which universities would host them.

Where this sits

This is the fourth distinct track reported from the same visit, after the Tobgay meeting, the royal audience and the separate legal education cooperation thread. Ada Derana is the only verified newsroom carrying the education-ministers’ meeting; its account, like the others, is a summary of an official statement rather than independent reporting from Thimphu.

Sources