Premachandra Wattage

• PhD (Iowa State University)
• University of Portsmouth

Bar Reef is a complex marine ecosystem with over 120 coral species living in the reef and over 300 fish species reported from the surrounding sea. It was declared a marine sanctuary in 1992. Despite efforts for conservation, the Bar Reef ecosystem is at risk of degradation due to overexploitation of extractive uses, namely, edible fish, other seafo...

Bar Reef is a diverse ecosystem with near shore coral reefs, sea grass beds and associated ecosystems with over 120 coral species and over 300 fish species reported from the surrounding sea. It has been declared as a marine sanctuary by the Department of Wildlife Conservation in 1992. Despite of the efforts it is subjected to over exploitation by e...

In Sri Lanka, the wet zone of Colombo and other urban areas usually experience urban flooding situations. Furthermore, the urban setting is rapidly changing. The community perceives flood control and water conservation relatively poorly. Rainwater harvesting is a low-impact development (LID) method to control urban flash flood situations. However,...

Different retail forms play an integral part in the urban landscape in Sri Lankan cities shaping its spatial form. In planning new and different grocery retail forms, the main considerations are usually location, distance to population catchments and income levels. But distance-based descriptive methods are incapable of predicting the actual shoppi...

Farmers encounter a significant challenge now that the Sri Lankan government has enacted new legislation prohibiting synthetic fertilizers and recommending using the 100 percent organic fertilizer. Therefore, it is essential to find a solution to the problem regarding organic fertilizer. Given this, the study examined farmers' willingness to apply...

Small-scale fisheries are an imperative livelihood alternative in Mullaitivu. This study intended to identify the role of gender in small-scale fisheries in Mullaitivu with a particular concern for women engaged in the fish value chain. Primary data were gathered through a field survey using simple random sampling technique. A structured questionna...

COVID-19 pandemic, lockdowns called attention to the importance of green spaces, especially in cities. Access to nature is diminishing as more people move to cities, living in high rise buildings and oftentimes, low-income people living in slums experience the greatest barriers. Key concerns of the study were identify the green infrastructure avail...

The value for goods and services is noticeable as the price is paid for those goods and services, but in environmental goods and services the real price or value is misrepresent in ordinary markets. Especially the forest benefits or non-market values are not normally exchange in markets and generally ignored in decision making. Benefits obtained fr...

An analysis of consumer awareness and preference of eco-labels in Galle district

Green Human Resource Management (Green HRM) is an emerging subject in the global context today. That step towards sustainable organizational trading performances to profit optimization. This is a recent phenomenon in Sri Lanka, where Green HRM practically struggles to deal with adverse environmental consequences within many firms. Many environmenta...

Willingness to pay (WTP) is a concept used in the economic valuation of environmental goods and ecosystem services. Based on this insight, this paper employs the contingent valuation method (CVM) to arrive at a measure of women's perception of willingness to pay in Colombo, Sri Lanka for CO2 emission reduction. The research was conducted using a sa...

Revitalization of open water bodies into recreational areas are becoming widely popular in many parts of Sri Lanka. Understanding community perception and expectation on recreational development have important policy and cost-effectiveness implications. This paper explores the public perspectives on development, conservation and value of the open w...

Revitalization of open waterbodies into recreational areas are becoming widely popular in many parts of Sri Lanka. Understanding community perception and expectation on recreational development have important policy and cost-effectiveness implications. This paper explores the public perspectives on development, conservation and value of the open wa...

Solid waste management has become a major issue in almost all municipalities especially in developing countries across the world. As more waste needs to be collected and disposed of in urban areas, the increased cost cannot be covered by the available funds in developing countries. Managing the Household Solid Waste (HSW) sector is very important a...

The impact of pollution from sewage treatment and agricultural run-off and associated impacts on coastal waters and important habitats were investigated in this study. Since there are several possible options for improving and preserving water quality, questions were asked from general public on their preference and perception on different options...

Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) have been proposed in many countries as a means of conserving parts of the marine environment. In some cases, MPAs may also confer recreational benefits. In this paper, a travel cost model is used to estimate the non-market recreational benefits arising from the Lundy Island Marine Nature Reserve (MNR). The estimated m...

Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) have been proposed in many countries as a means of conserving parts of the marine environment. In some cases, MPAs may also confer recreational benefits. In this paper, a travel cost model is used to estimate the non-market recreational benefits arising from the Lundy Island Marine Nature Reserve (MNR). The estimated m...

Local people rely heavily on the marine resources of the Asian Seas and coastal wetlands can provide benefits to local people, particularly through sustainable fishing and wetland related activities. The present level of recognition of this fact is low and therefore public support and awareness is very poor. Public support for marine biodiversity c...

A targeted literature review –

Deep-water corals are slow growing, fragile and vulnerable to the impacts of deep-water fisheries and the development activities of the offshore industries. In Ireland there is now evidence of major damage to deep-water corals linked to a recent expansion of the Irish deep-water fishery. This fishery uses trawls fitted with robust rock hopping gear...

With the UK Marine Bill promoting the creation of a network of marine protected areas and similar commitments in other countries there is a need for tools to assist in their design and management. Although physical science often drives designation, the implementation of marine protected areas also encompasses political and socio-economic issues. Th...

In this paper an attempt is made to identify the socioeconomic characteristics of a community that influences the development and management of culture-based fisheries in village reservoirs of Sri Lanka. Socioeconomic data were collected from 46 agricultural farming communities associated with 47 village reservoirs in Sri Lanka. Principal component...

The existence of excessive fishing capacity is globally recognized by resource managers as a major problem for fisheries, and it is responsible for the degradation of fishery resources and for significant economic waste. Estimates of fishing capacity and capacity utilization may provide helpful tools in designing an effective capacity management pl...

In tropical regions, mangroves, clean (unpolluted) water-bodies and fish are important aspects of wetland areas, which are considered as the basic requirement for livelihood improvement in local communities. Particularly, their conservation is very important to both inland as well as inshore fisheries. However, conservation of such areas is depende...

Knowledge of future demand is essential for promoting sustainability in water resources, informing decisions over the allocation of water between people and the environment. Improved econometric models of non-household water demand are presented, which have been developed for the Yorkshire Water region, providing annual demand forecasts to the year...

Fisheries co-management is essentially the sharing of responsibilities and/or authority between the government and local resource users to manage the fishery resource. This strategy is recognized as a solution to the problems encountered in centralized top-down management approaches. In the 'stake net fishery' of Negombo estuary in Sri Lanka, an ef...

Fisheries Socio-Economics (Chair: Premachandra Wattage) A. Socioeconomics on Artificial Reefs: A Portuguese Case Study (Jorge Ramos. B. The Impact of Co-Management on Poverty Reduction Using Common Property Resources: Culture-Based Fisheries in the Village Reservoirs of Sri Lanka (Mohottala Kularatne). C. Cost Effectiveness of Bycatch and Environ...

This paper reports the results of a survey of public attitudes towards aquaculture, using salmon farming in Scotland as a case study. The aims have been to identify the priority that people attach to the environmental performance of the salmon aquaculture industry, relative to other objectives, and to measure the economic benefits to society from s...

In determining the importance of criteria in the management of wetlands, two key issues arise: that is whether they should be conserved for environmental benefits, or whether they should be used for development activities. This is indeed the conflict faced in many natural resource management problems. This paper considers the development of stakeho...

Fisheries management is characterised by multiple objectives. Decision making is often impeded by different stakeholders placing different importance on these objectives. While compromise solutions are often achieved, more efficient solutions might be possible if the preference structure of stakeholders was known. In this paper, the potential of ch...

There has been a growing interest in recent years in the potential use of product differentiation in seafood products (mainly through eco-type labelling), as a means of promoting and rewarding the sustainable management and exploitation of fish stocks. The potential encapsulated by product differentiation has, however, yet to be tested in the marke...

A major difficulty of conventional cost benefit analysis is that it will allow choosing an alternative among others only on the criterion of economic efficiency: that the selected project or activity has been proven to produce economic benefits over costs for the period of the project. An analysis of this kind generally does not create a problem if...

Over the last decade or so, a number of bioeconomic models have been developed with the expressed objective of identifying the optimal time to harvest farmed fish. The models explicitly incorporate growth rates, prices and costs, but have generally excluded risk except implicitly through the discount rate. Implicit in this is the assumption that ri...

This paper aims to reveal consumers’ preferences for quality graded fish products based upon existing data on first-hand sales in Denmark. The data represents the value of fish for consumption,as a non-differentiated private good. The objective is to measure,the welfare gains to society of an increase in “quality” for major fish species. The demand...

There has been a growing interest in recent years in the poten tial use of product differentiation (through eco-type labelling) as a means of promoting and rewarding the sustainable management and exploitation of fish stocks. This interest is marked by the growing literature on the topic, exploring both the concept and the key issues associated wit...

The non-market nature of water quality improvement in rivers hinders the use of traditional cost-benefit analysis (CBA) to measure the efficiency of investments. Substantial investments have been made to clean up contaminated river water with little comparison of the costs or environmental impact (EI) with future benefits. Water quality impact mode...

The coastal ecosystem is essential to life on our planet and supports the livelihood of people living and depending on coastal resources. The abundance of good quality coastal resources is fundamental to all marine biological processes and supports living resources. Moreover it is essential for the maintenance of biodiversity and ecosystems, in add...

Marine protected areas (MPAs) have been proposed in many countries as means of conserving parts of the marine environment. Several studies have suggested that MPAs may result in benefits to the fishing industry also as a result of enhanced stocks. In some cases, MPAs may also confer recreational benefits. This paper examines the potential recreatio...