International Day for Disaster Risk Reduction

There have been close to 30 unparalleled disasters in 2023 alone—from wildfires in the North Americas, to flooding in Libya, Korea, Greece and China, to drought-like conditions followed by torrential rains in Sri Lanka—a perfect storm on a number of fronts. In the aftermath of a devastating economic crisis, 31% of Sri Lanka’s population lives in poverty.

Sri Lanka’s first Multidimensional Vulnerability Index (MVI) recently published by UNDP in Sri Lanka and the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative (OPHI), report titled ‘Understanding Multidimensional Vulnerabilities: Impact on People of Sri Lanka’, outlines that 55.7% of Sri Lankans are multidimensionally vulnerable, and 48.8% of the population are vulnerable and deprived in adaptive capacity to disasters. The outlook for Sri Lanka is bleak.

Socioeconomic disparities and inequalities are skyrocketing. According to the World Bank Group, on average, Sri Lanka experiences LKR 50 billion (US$313 million) in annual disaster losses related to housing, infrastructure, agriculture, and relief. This is equivalent to 0.4% of gross domestic product (GDP) or 2.1% of government expenditure.

For a country grappling with mounting debt, these figures ring devastating alarm bells. Further aggravating the issue, Sri Lanka is also one of the most climate-vulnerable countries in the world, ranking within the top ten countries worst affected, consecutively over the recent years. On our current trajectory, by 2030, the world will face some 1.5 significant disasters per day. Current research shows that about 75% of extreme weather events are currently connected to climate change, fueled by carbon emissions.  Countries like Sri Lanka experience the greatest losses from climate disasters, and yet have contributed the least to the problem.

However bleak, Sri Lanka already has the solutions to enhance our disaster risk reduction pathway. At the center of these solutions is climate information. Climate information helps people and organizations make climate-smart decisions, particularly when combined with data on socio-economic variables – such as agricultural production, water, poverty, health trends, roads and infrastructure .

Blueprint for enhanced disaster risk reduction

The Climate Resilient Integrated Water Management Project (CRIWMP) provides innovative solutions to ensure the climate resilience of rural communities,  and serves as a scalable blueprint for the rest of Sri Lanka to enhance disaster risk reduction. The project works towards strengthening climate and hydrological observation and forecasting systems to enhance water management and the adaptive capacity of smallholder farmers to disasters such as droughts and floods.

In particular, the project has introduced new technologies and created systems that have enabled farmers and communities to generate, access and  share information for the timely and coordinated operation of irrigation, for agriculture planning and drinking water systems and disaster early warnings. “Since we were provided with the accurate weather forecasts by the CRIWM Project, we were able to cultivate three seasons. This helped us double our harvests and protect it from the rain. We have now been able to grow from our baseline, increase our yield and strengthen our income,” says Anura Wasantha, a farmer from the Palugaswewa Cascade in Anuradhapura.

Customized agro-meteorological advisories for communities

The project has devised a model that brings together an array of national and local agencies, from the Department of Meteorology, the Disaster Management Center, the Department of Agrarian Development, the Department of Irrigation, the Department of Provincial Agriculture to the Agrarian Service Centers at the local level, and down to the local level extension officers, and finally but most importantly the farmer communities. The model downscales the national agro-meteorological advisories to the district level, to create and disseminate customized local agro-meteorological advisories and provide seasonal climate information that is locality-specific, relevant, accurate, accessible and easily digestible.

These advisories provide communities with comprehensive information that minimizes their risks not only in terms of disaster early warnings, but also on their cultivations, water availability and usage, agriculture inputs and the sustainability of natural resources and the dry-zone ecosystem. In particular, the project facilitated the development of the advisory for the upcoming 2023/24 major (maha) season—a necessity in the context of the volatility that El Niño impacts present.

“We have been farmers for generations, but we only cultivated in the maha season, and very rarely the minor (yala) season. The climate information shared through the project enabled us to plan for the maha season, and plan  water usage from our tank. For instance, if we were expecting rain, we could save the water in the tank, and instead use rainwater.  We could also cultivate the yala season, and another mid-season  with the water we have saved in the tank” says Jayanath Priyantha, attesting to the success of the climate information and agro-met advisor model in the Palugaswewa Cascade, Anuradhapura.

Sri Lanka can curb the destructive power of hazards—in other words, stop them from turning into disasters—through careful and coordinated planning that is designed to reduce people’s exposure and vulnerability to harm. The results of this project over the years have proven to be the saving grace of the smallholder farmers in the Dry Zone, especially in a time when the country grapples with multidimensional vulnerabilities.

As Sri Lanka embarks on its crisis recovery process, centering risk-informed development, with a particular focus on innovative solutions like CRIWMP’s climate information and agro-met advisory model, inherently enables dedicated action that tackles underlying disaster risk drivers, such as the consequences of poverty and inequality. (UNDP)