The 101st birth anniversary of Sir Joseph Rotblat, who passed away on August 31 2005 in his 97th year, falls on November 4, 2009. He was the last surviving signatory of the Russell– Einstein Manifesto in 1955, signed by eleven renowned scientists, nine of them Nobel laureates at the time. A conference of scientists from across the cold war divide followed, in the fishing village of Pugwash, Nova Scotia, Canada in 2007, which led to the birth of the Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs with Bertrand Russell as the first President. One signatory to the Manifesto was a mathematician, and the other was Rotblat who shared the Nobel Peace prize in 1995, with the Pugwash Conferences.

Sri Lanka Ambassador Jayantha Dhanapala was elected as the eleventh President of Pugwash for a five year term 2007 – 2012. The Sri Lanka Pugwash group honoured him by publishing a Felicitation volume, and organizing a regional Pugwash Workshop on ‘Learning from Ancient Hydraulic Civilizations to Combat Climate Change’, in November 2007, in Sri Lanka. A Resolution was passed at the conclusion of that conference "Recommending to Government that the project known as A River for Jaffna that was started some fifty years ago, should be restored as an important step towards involving Sri Lankans in the Jaffna peninsula in the development and enjoyment of the natural resources of the country thereby contributing to the early achievement of a durable peace". A similar Resolution had been passed at the 103rd annual sessions of the Institution of Engineers a month earlier in October 2007. As is now well known President Mahinda Rajapakse has accepted these recommendations and the restoration of the River for Jaffna project, also known as the "Arumugam Plan" is under way.

Mr. Tissa Vitarana, Minister of Science and Technology was Chief Guest at the November 2007 Pugwash Workshop. In his inaugural address, Dr Tissa Vitarana warned:

That prescient observation will also be seeing fulfillment in the resettlement of IDPs in the Vanni, as will be seen in discussions at this Joseph Rotblat commemoration meeting. The basis is as follows:

After almost three decades of a cruel internecine conflict, the final military defeat of the rebel Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, in May 2009, saw nearly three hundred thousand civilians who had been held captive by the LTTE (and even used as human shields) in the northern Vanni district in Sri Lanka, freed. They have now to be resettled after the area has been de-mined, an arduous and dangerous operation undertaken by the army even with loss of life and limb. This problem of internally displaced persons or IDPs was discussed at the Institution of Engineers 103rd annual conference in a seminar session on ‘Strategies and Engineering Solutions for North – East Development’ on October 3, 2009. (Described in ‘A 20th Century Renaissance in Sri Lanka? – Rehabilitation, Reconstruction and Reconciliation’). An important aspect of the resettlement program is a plan for transfer of technology for stable and sustainable water and soil conservation ecosystems in the Vanni, beginning with highland cultivation of coconut. Three papers published in the Proceedings volume of the 2007 Pugwash Workshop are relevant. These are: the Preface which described a proven high yielding coconut cultivation which takes five years to yield, developed over the past three decades in Kohomba estate by Dr Ray Wijewardena; the Prologue which is a paper on the ‘International Commons’ by Nobel Laureate, the late Abdus Salam, presented at the 33rd Pugwash Conference in Venice in 1983; and a paper titled ‘Nature of the Commons and its Challenges’ by Aiichiro Mogi from Japan who participated in the Workshop.

Following these discussions on the Commons, Dr Ray Wijewardena, a triple graduate in engineering from Cambridge University in England, has offered to combine the fruits of a lifetime’s scientific research and experience on organic agriculture, with an unique concept of the Commons, to be introduced in his Kohomba estate. He is doing this in consultation with another Pugwashite the renowned jurist Judge Dr C G Weeramantry, former Vice President of the International Court of Justice, who delivered the Dorothy Hodgkin Memorial Oration at the 55th international Pugwash conference in Hiroshima in 2005. Dorothy Hodgkin was awarded the 1964 Nobel prize in Chemistry, and was the eighth President of Pugwash (1976 – 1988).

Dr Wijewardena’s Kohomba estate will then be accessible to local villagers for food (coconuts) and fuel wood, in return for contributing some labour towards maintenance of the estate. This experience will be available as a technology package for transfer to the Vanni as a five year plan for resettlement of the IDPs under state supervision, five years being the time taken for the coconut to yield. Back in the late 1950s the Government Agent Vavuniya initiated a very successful 5 acre highland settlement scheme which was also described in a paper at the Pugwash Workshop. A similar scheme can be the basis for technology transfer from Kohomba estate, creating an unique contribution to the achievement of a durable Peace in Sri Lanka. This is especially important in view of unfair and potentially harmful publicity in the public media abroad originating from some Sri Lanka diaspora, in spite of the heroic efforts at rehabilitation, reconstruction and reconciliation by Sri Lanka people in our country.

This will be a truly appropriate memorial tribute to Sir Joseph Rotblat, the founding father figure of the international Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs.