“We need a fresh paradigm towards a permanent truce with nature, in concurrance with her pace and in sync with her rhythm.” -- Ray Wijewardene

The discussion on ‘ Economic Development’ as a national goal, must demonstrate a perspective strongly rooted in modern science. However, the goals of today suggest that our appreciation of the scientific method of evaluation is a little short. Nevertheless, it is hoped that Sri Lanka’s contribution at the Rio + 20 and at other international conventions that discuss the common future of mankind can propose something innovative rather than the mediocre dribble of the past. Having been party to these processes, the probability of a repetition of past mediocrity is great. Thus in the interest of the profile of this nation and in the interest of a benign future for our children, the following reasoning is advanced. One hopes that the Sri Lankan delegates to the various international conventions this year will raise the need to ‘value photosynthetic biomass’ at all plenary sessions as a national contribution.

Life on Earth learnt how to maintain gas and material flows, optimum for the evolution and sustainability of biodiversity. Carbon Dioxide, although essential to the process of life, was often introduced into the atmosphere by volcanic processes at disruptive levels, throughout geologic history. But the gas has not concentrated in the atmosphere, because it was sequestered by living things and put away out of circulation from the biosphere of living carbon, so that the environment was stable for life. This store of carbon was fossilized and has been slowly accumulating over the last few hundred million years and has acted as the storage of excess carbon.

In our rush to create the new petroleum and coaldriven economy, this very simple and fundamental fact has been ignored. Carbon that cycles through living systems represents a fixed proportion of the planetary carbon, one part solid, like the carbohydrates in trees and one part gas, as in atmospheric Carbon Dioxide gas. If excess Carbon Dioxide enters the atmosphere through tectonic processes such as volcanism, photosynthetic activity removes this excess carbon dioxide from the biosphere and that excess is deposited as fossils to enter the lithosphere (rocks), never to interact with the biosphere again. This deposition is translat-