The Center for Eco-Cultural Studies (CES) will focus on minimizing the conflicts of interest between the wildlife and forest conservation managers and the Vadda community. The Vadda community, an indigenous, forest-dwelling people, have been displaced from their traditional hunting and gathering lands, uprooted to make way for large-scale hydropower and agricultural development schemes and Protected Areas. They have also suffered from a decrease in their traditional livelihood practices, due to dwindling forest resources. This community faces great poverty and has poor access to health care and sanitation facilities and receives little social recognition and acceptance.

Ratugala is largely composed of a Vadda community, including 80 families living among mixed and non-Vadda Sinhalese people. The project endeavors to protect the rights of traditional/indigenous forest-dwelling communities. The project will endorse planned initiatives for socio-economic enhancement, and cultural and environmental conservation through participatory community initiatives for direct, long-term benefits to the communities concerned.

The holistic approach that includes voices from various areas of society will ensure long term benefits through the identification of viable alternatives with respect to natural resource conservation, livelihood recovery and socio- cultural enhancement thus serving to benefit all stakeholders concerned including forest-dependent communities and conservation managers alike.