Long drought could cost Sri Lanka billions
It is a very serious situation, something that we have not faced in a long time, but we are taking precautions.
COLOMBO: The warnings are stark, the instructions, for a change, clear.
Sri Lanka is heading into one of its worst droughts in recent history, and according some estimates the worst in 30 years. The reservoirs are running on empty, at 30 per cent or less capacity. Only 12 per cent of the island’s power generation is currently from hydropower and 85 per cent comes from thermal, with a staggering 41 per cent from coal.
The rains have stayed away like never before. According to a recent survey by the World Food Programme ( WFP) and the government, last year’s rains were 23 per cent less than the 30year average.
One of the long-term consequences that is rarely highlighted is the impact droughts have on land degradation.
Now the instructions: Use water sparingly, do not wash vehicles with pipe-borne water, do not put air conditioning below 26 C, and light bonfires in the morning if you want to protect your crops from the morning mist, a forerunner, according to local yore, of a impending drought.
“It is a very serious situation,
Lalith Chandarapala, the head of the Meteorological Department
something that we have not faced in a long time, but we are taking precautions,” said Lalith Chandarapala, the head of the Meteorological Department. It was his department that first warned of the drought when the rains failed yet again last year around September.
In fact, in 2016, there were only three days of exceptionally high rains, during mid-May, when 300 mm fell on some parts of the island. On either side of them, it was drier than usual.
The effects have been catastrophic. Of a possible 800,000 acres, only a little above 300,000 was planted with the staple rice crops during the last harvesting season due to lack of water.
“This is the lowest cultivation level experienced in Sri Lanka during the last thirty years,” the WFP- government joint survey said. It estimated that by end of December, already close to a million people were affected by the drought in 23 of the 25 districts. By the third week of January, the government’s Disaster Management Center said that over 900,000 were receiving water brought in from outside. “Even if the country receives average rains in the months of January and February 2017, it is highly unlikely that the current drought situation will improve until March 2017,” the joint assessment warned.
The government has already slashed taxes on rice imports to fend off price hikes as well as shortages and decided to buy power on short-term agreements from private suppliers till the next rains. The additional power purchases are expected to cost the government Rs 50b.
It has also restricted water supply to areas where there is an acute shortage of safe water and ordered a survey of private wells. Millions of Sri Lankan households use dug wells for domestic consumption without any purview by any authority. Any move to curtail such use or to use these wells for public supplies will be a deeply unpopular move.
Apart from the short-term impacts of such frequent extreme weather events, experts also worry about the long term implications.
“Changing climate is an issue we have to deal with, our policies now have to reflect awareness as well as adaptation measures,” Disaster Management Minister Anura Priyadarshna Yapa said.
One of these long-term consequences that is rarely highlighted is the impact droughts have on land degradation. — IPS