Communities in Puttalam and Mannar feel they have not reaped adequate peace dividends, resulting in underlying tensions. Following the recent attacks in April 2019, this is now an even more critical, timely initiative to address current tensions, especially considering the ethno-religious composition of the two districts, as the willingness of communities to engage in traditional peacebuilding initiatives is low.

This project takes an innovative, integrated approach to peacebuilding, tackling ethno-religious tensions by bringing communities together to provide a sustainable solution for a shared environmental issue, with women at the forefront for conflict prevention. The nexus of Environmental Conflicts – Gender – Communal Tensions is unique, and a new area of peacebuilding not yet explored in Sri Lanka. Moreover, efforts to develop a women-led initiative in de-escalating religious intolerance and violent extremism are minimal.

It is a focused initiative, within the specific context of Puttalam and Mannar, looking at environmental conflicts caused through poor waste management, considering waste is not a gender-neutral concept. The perceived lack of adequate interest by the State has left this issue unresolved, providing an opportunity for communities - particularly women - to develop conflict prevention and resolution skills in relation to the issue of SWM, which can be transferable for solving other communal tensions. This will provide a sense of ownership to citizens over solutions provided to address current issues such as SWM and others in the future. As part of the local governance structure, sustainability beyond the project cycle can be ensured.

The project focuses on women’s role within their communities to support conflict prevention in a context of religious intolerance and violent extremism. Gendered division of household labour results in women being mostly responsible for waste management, hence they play critical roles in responding to environmental degradation at community level. Women’s political engagement results in greater responsiveness to citizens’ needs, often increasing cooperation across party and ethno-religious lines, delivering more sustainable peace. Despite high involvement in communities, women remain under-represented in policy and decision-making; their experiences and skills are often overlooked.

Women are uniquely positioned within families/communities to influence motivations that drive individuals to support intolerant ideologies or violence. Their gendered roles in shaping and informing families and communities allow women to support in countering intolerant narratives, mistrust and fear, which converge to exacerbate tensions and promote violence. Empowering women – in political, economic, social, religious spheres – resulted in religious moderation, tolerance and curbing radicalization among youth.

Functional Responsibilities

The Environmental Engineering Technician - Senior Assistant will be assisting the Project Manager (PM) for the improvement of waste management system of local authorities in Puttalam District for the setting-up of a customer-oriented waste management services: implementation of efficient solid waste collection and segregation scheme, operationalize composting facility, organize recycling activities, eliminating illegal dumpsite and related operation. The successful applicant will ideally come from a trade background (but not necessarily), have experience in solid waste and project management, a sound understanding of the operation of solid waste facilities and waste collection, including excellent time management and people skills.

The Environmental Engineering Technician - Senior Assistant will be responsible for the following areas of Waste Segregation, Collection, Transfer and secure Disposal:

Administrative and Technical Support

Knowledge Building and Knowledge sharing

  • Support the organization and delivery of training for Local Authorities' waste collection staff.

  • Support the knowledge sharing of technically viable and financially feasible solutions for solid waste management issues in the target areas.

  • Provides sound contributions to the knowledge sharing process by synthesizing lessons learnt and best practices to support the authorities to explicitly understand their roles and responsibility.

  • Contributes feedback, ideas, and internal knowledge about processes and best practices and utilize productively

  • Maintains unit’s documentation including records and files, ensuring safekeeping of confidential materials

This vacancy is archived.

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