Disaster warnings ignored in Sri Lanka

IRIN: Lives and livelihoods are being lost unnecessarily in Sri Lanka because local communities are ignoring disaster warnings, according to officials. More than 70 people died in the last two months of 2014 as a result of floods and landslides while the earlier part of the year was marked by a prolonged drought, severely impacting the rice harvest.

“In both instances, the losses could have been avoided if warnings were heeded but unfortunately they weren’t,” Sarath Lal Kumara, assistant director at Sri Lanka’s Disaster Management Centre (DMC), told IRIN.

The government, through the department of agriculture, asked farmers in early 2014 to reduce the amount of land cultivated for rice and to plant more drought resistant crops because of indications that the monsoon rains might fail. Very few responded to the call.

By the time the 10-month long drought began to ease, Sri Lanka’s rice harvest was estimated to be more than 20 percent short of a government target of four million metric tons. According to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization at the end of 2014 all rice varieties had recorded price increases of between 25 to 50 percent over the previous year.

“What we have here is not a problem of lack of water, but a water management problem,” said Ivan de Silva who served as secretary to the Ministry of Irrigation and Water Management until January this year....

The exposed floor of a reservoir in Sri Lanka, shot by Hasindu2008, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license 

En route to climate change adaptation

Ayesha Qaisrani in Pakistan Today: With no adherence to geographical boundaries, climate change continues to hover over our heads like a dense, dark cloud of uncertainty. Even with all the sophisticated projections of climate change, only one thing about it remains certain: that it is happening and we better act now.

Realising the gravity of the situation, Climate Action Network South Asia (CANSA) in collaboration with Janathakshan and Asia Pacific Adaptation Network (APAN), organised a sub-regional workshop for the South Asian nations in Colombo, Sri Lanka, to discuss the latest adaptation initiatives taken up and exchange best practices and information. The workshop took place on the 23rd and 24th of February 2015 and was attended by representatives of Pakistan, India, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, the Maldives, Bhutan and Nepal including representation from the respective governments, the parliaments and the civil society.

...It was encouraging to get insights about the adaptation initiatives being taken up by the nations of South Asia. Even more encouraging was the general recognition of the need of cooperation and collaboration among the nations for an effective response to climate change. Emphasising on the need of regional cooperation, Mr Malik Muhammad Uzair Khan, Member Parliament, Pakistan, commented, “Pakistan like India, Nepal, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh is reeling under the worst impacts of climate change. Clearly, climate change knows no borders and now more than ever it is critical that our leaders come together to share best practices for climate change adaptation and set the region on the path of sustainable development.”

Underlining that capacity building is the keystone to effective adaptation to climate change. The representatives advocated a balanced investment in physical infrastructure and skills of the population. They stressed upon focusing on education and awareness, health, agriculture sector, water management and disaster preparedness to increase the resilience of people and reduce their vulnerability. Besides individual and community level, focus should also be directed at institutional capacity building as, quite often, it is the institutions that are inefficient in setting their priorities for strategic response to climate change....

NASA image of 2010 flooding in Pakistan

Rains slow Sri Lankan landslide search; nearly 150 feared dead

Reuters: Heavy rains hampered search operations on Friday at the site of a landslide in Sri Lanka where more than 100 people were buried under tons of mud and rubble two days ago. Fears of further landslips in the rain-sodden hills around the tea-plantation village of Haldummulla also slowed efforts to recover the dead, after a disaster that has brought offers of assistance from neighbour India and the United States.

Officials had originally put the death toll from Wednesday's landslide at more than 300 but reduced it after it emerged that many schoolchildren and plantation workers had been at a safe distance when the avalanche engulfed their homes. Latest data fron Sri Lanka's Disaster Management Centre showed that 183 people had survived out of a total of 330 who lived in the area in south-central Sri Lanka.

As soldiers and police worked to clear mounds of earth, survivors were housed in two temporary camps set up nearby. Disaster Management Minister Mahinda Amaraweera told parliament the cabinet had decided to help them build new homes in a safe location.

A local resident told Reuters around 150 clay and cement houses had been buried in the landslide, which was 3 km (2 miles) long and was triggered by days of heavy monsoon rains. Ravichandran Gajini, 14, said her parents had left their house before the landslide but hurried back in to retrieve documents....

13 dead as monsoon triggers havoc in Sri Lanka capital

Space Daily via AFP: Unusually heavy monsoon rains have flooded Sri Lanka's capital and neighbouring districts where mudslides killed at least 13 people, officials said Monday.

The island's western and southern regions experienced heavy rains with more than 100 millimetres (four inches) dumped within about one hour on Sunday, an official at the Disaster Management Centre (DMC) said.

"The weather appears to be getting worse and we could have more rain in the coming days," DMC director Sarath Lal Kumara told AFP.

He said a search was underway for two people missing after a mudslide in a Colombo suburb on Sunday night. Police and DMC records showed 13 people had been killed since Sunday evening while at least another two were reported missing....

A Colombo market braced for monsoon rains in 2007, shot by McKay Savage, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license

Sri Lanka offers lessons on how not to manage water

IRIN: Angry paddy farmers blocked major roads in the Minneriya and Girithale areas in Sri Lanka’s North Eastern Polonnaruwa region last month, complaining the government had not released enough water for their rice to grow; they claimed they had lost 50,000 hectares of crops, or 1.75 million kg.

Ananda Edirisuriya, who took part in the protests, accused the Irrigation Department of failing to notify farmers of impending water shortages. “We need to know in advance if there is going to be a drought and how wide the impact is. Right now what we get is that when the drought is at its worst, the officials come and tell us that there is no water,” he told IRIN. “By then it is too late, we have already planted our crops.”

R M P Karunaratane, deputy director of the Polonnaruwa Irrigation Department, admitted weak rainfall was partially to blame, but passed the buck to reservoir releases, claiming the water shortage was caused when no water was released from the main reservoirs that feed the local reservoirs over which his office has control.

“We also don’t know much about impending droughts because we also don’t get detailed forecasts,” Karunaratane added, explaining that the daily bulletins he receives by fax from the central Department of Irrigation and the Meteorological Department often contain insufficient information to accurately inform farmers about water availability.

Edirisuriya said the bureaucratic hurdles are compounded by hotels in the area using large amounts of water. The exasperated farmer added: “If there is a drought, then there needs to be priorities, and agriculture should be the top priority.”...

When building the Victoria Dam in Sri Lanka the Teldeniya city was submerged. This is the sumbmerged old Teldeniya city seen during a drought period the reservior water level abrupty dropped in 2012. Shot by Hasindu2008, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

Sri Lanka waits in vain for the rain

Amantha Perera in IPS: Stuck in mid-day rush hour traffic, commuters packed tight into a tin-roofed bus in Sri Lanka’s capital, Colombo, peer expectantly up at the sky that is beating a savage heat down on the city. No one speaks, but it is clear they are all waiting for the same thing: for the heavens to open up and provide some relief from the scorching weather that is slowly cooking this island nation.

Over 200 km east, in the agricultural district of Ampara, farmers and rural folk wait equally expectantly for the elusive monsoon, already a few weeks late in coming. Water levels at the Senanayake Samudraya tank, which holds the bulk of the district’s water needs, are dangerously low, having dropped below 30 percent of the reservoir’s capacity at the end of May, according to the department of irrigation.

All over the country, low-level anxiety over the water shortage is slowly giving way to panic. With each day that the rains do not fall, food shortages increase, poverty worsens and the economy lurches in uncertainty.

Strangely, the government is yet to officially declare a drought situation, even though water levels in most major reservoirs – which supply close to 46 percent of the country’s electricity needs – are alarmingly low.

Given that over 75 percent of Sri Lanka’s population lives in rural areas, with a large percentage engaged in rice farming, a drought threatens the country to its very core. Harvest losses mounted in the first half of this year, leaving farmers and officials fearful that a predicted weaker-than-average southwest monsoon season will exacerbate the situation.

“It is not looking very good,” warned Rajith Punyawardena, chief climatologist at the department of agriculture, pointing out that the main rice harvesting season, which concluded in April, recorded a loss of 17 percent compared to last year....

Adbar took this aerial photo of the Southern Province in Sri Lanka, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

Drought begins to bite in Sri Lanka

IRIN: Sri Lanka has had six months of drought and could face severe crop losses and electricity shortages if the coming monsoon is as weak as forecasts predict, experts say. “The situation is really, really bad,” said Ranjith Punyawardena, chief climatologist at the Department of Agriculture. “Already there are harvest losses and more are anticipated.”

According to Punyawardena, 5 percent (280,000 tons) of the 2014 rice harvest has already been lost due to the ongoing drought, which stretches back to November 2013. With 200,000 hectares of rice fields (20 percent of the annual cultivated total) planted during the secondary harvesting season already lost, experts say the losses from the drought could be exacerbated by the forecasted weak southwest monsoon, due in May.

Sarath Lal Kumara, deputy director at the Disaster Management Centre (DMC), said the impact of the drought had intensified in the last two months. “We are getting more and more reports of lack of water and harvest losses,” he said, emphasizing that the worst affected regions were the Northern, North Central and Southern Provinces.

By the end of March 2014 over 240,000 families had been affected by diminished water supply and harvest losses, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA). The Ministry of Disaster Management has so far spent US$2.3 million in assistance. According to the Department of Census and Statistics, at least 32 percent of the country’s labour force of 8.6 million derives its income from agriculture....

An aerial view of Jaffna Peninsula on Sri Lanka, shot by Anuradha Ratnaweera, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license

Drought affects over 87,000 families in Anuradhapura, Sri Lanka

The Daily News (Sri Lanka): Over 87,000 families have been affected due to the drought in the Anuradhapura district, Anuradhapura Government Agent Mahinda Senevirathne said. According to the Government Agent 43,320 families have been badly affected while 2,6671 families are facing medium scale cultivation damage.

He said in consultation with the authorities, steps have been taken to provide relief to affected families. "It has been planned to use the man power of these families t
o attend to minor repairs to tanks, irrigation canals, anicuts and agriculture roads in the rural areas. Each person is given 22 days of work on basis of for hours for a day being paid Rs. 500 per working day as a livelihood support to face the challenge of the drought," Seneviratne said.

The Government Agent emphasised that the Divisional Secretaries and the grass roots level field officers were engaged in the implementation of drought relief program under the supervision of officials of the Disaster Management Ministry.

Meanwhile, families will receive dry food rations including sugar, wheat flour, rice, coconut oil and dhal from today. The Government Agent said he has completed holding meetings with farmers adding that the farmers had agreed to minimise paddy cultivation during the 2014 Yala and cultivate more additional food crops such as green gram, cowpea , undu, gingelly, soya and maize.He stated that even the cultivation of additional food crops will be limited because of the shortage of water in tanks. ..

A stupa in Anuradhapura, shot by Saqib Qayyum, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license 

Sri Lanka' punishing heat wave

Amantha Perera in IPS: Sri Lanka is heading into a major crisis under extreme heat, as the rains stay away. Fears are growing of power cuts and interruption to the water supply because reservoir levels are running scarily low. By the third week of February, the Ceylon Electricity Board said it was relying on expensive thermal generators for 76 percent of the country’s power supply.

Around August 2012, extended dry weather almost dried up hydro-reservoirs. The country spent over two billion dollars to import furnace oil. The drought impacted over a million persons, according to the Sri Lanka Red Cross. Power supply and the vital paddy harvest are likely to be hit if the rains stay away for longer.

The 2012 dry spell was followed by heavy rains that allowed hydro-power to gain lost ground last year. That vicious cycle could be repeating itself. Central Bank Governor Ajith Nivard Cabraal said last week that changing climate patterns have had a serious impact on the country’s fortunes. “Sri Lanka also is impacted by climate change in the form of droughts, floods and other natural disasters. We take these matters into consideration when framing monetary policy,” he said during a live Twitter interaction.

According to experts, power supply and the vital paddy harvest are likely to be hit if the rains stay away for longer. Asoka Abeygunawardana, executive director of the Sri Lanka Energy Forum and Advisor to the Ministry of Technology, told IPS that Sri Lanka’s power supply was too dependent on hydro-power or on costly coal and furnace oil....

Sri Lanka's Victoria Dam in wetter times in 2009, shot by Chamal N, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license 

Sri Lankan aquifer depleting from overuse

Dilrukshi Handunnetti in SciDev.net: The single limestone aquifer, which is the main source of freshwater in Sri Lanka's northern Jaffna peninsula, is gradually depleting through overuse, researchers say.

"The area suffers from severe groundwater imbalance which might reach crisis proportions in the future," Shanti de Silva, one of two scientists who carried out the research for the agricultural department of the University of Jaffna, told SciDev.Net.

 At a presentation of the research results last month (18 April), de Silva called for a regulatory framework to optimise groundwater use in Jaffna peninsula — which was captured by the Sri Lankan army from separatist rebels in May 2009, ending decades of civil strife.

Originally published in Tropical Agricultural Research (in December 2012), the results showed that  the potential recharge of the aquifer in the dry season was approximately 14 per cent of that in the wet season — showing up a serious contrast between the two main seasons.

"Water resources of the basin remain almost constant while the demand for water continues to increase. Moreover, due to uneven distribution of rainfall, water resources lack replenishment," the report said.

...The researchers recommend extraction of 50 per cent of the annual recharge to prevent a severe imbalance developing in the aquifer, the main resource for agriculture, domestic use and water supply on the Jaffna peninsula....

Dried up in Jaffna, Sri Lanka, shot by Gerald Pereira, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license

Peace brings new pressures on water in northern Sri Lanka

Amantha Perera in AlertNet: When she came back to her house almost two-and-a-half years after fleeing it amid intense fighting, Rajina Mary looked desperately for one thing – the well in her garden. It was early 2011, and the 38-year-old war widow had returned to her village with her four children to rebuild a life devastated by Sri Lanka’s prolonged conflict, which ended in 2009.

“When I saw the well covered with weeds, but relatively intact, I was so relieved,” she says. The well, in this parched village in the country’s Northern Province, meant that when one of the region’s frequent droughts sets in, her family would not have to walk miles to look for safe water. That is the fate of thousands of others who returned to find their wells caved in. “When we rebuilt our house, we did not have any water issues, we just used the well,” Mary said.

But as people return to the war-ravaged region, experts are warning that pressures on its water supply are growing and that using water sparingly will be crucial, particularly as climate change brings more weather extremes.

Over 460,000 people have returned to the Northern Province since late 2009. The massive influx of people, coupled with increases in farming, construction and other industries, has caused an enormous increase in water usage, experts say.

The biggest overuse is happening in small agriculture plots that use mechanized pumps. Thousands of such pumps have been distributed among returning civilians and are in daily use. Ravi Vinanithambi, an environment officer with the government’s Emergency Northern Recovery Project, estimates that the pumps extract three times the necessary water requirement.

...Without better water management, the region faces dire water scarcity, experts say....

Sunset over lagoons in Sri Lanka, shot by Indi Samarajiva, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license 

Adaptation and development in Sri Lanka

The Daily News (Sri Lanka): Sri Lanka has embarked on an ambitious new era of economic development, Environment and Renewable Energy Minister Susil Premajayantha said. He was speaking at the launch of the publication Climate Change Issues in Sri Lanka at the Institute of Policy Studies of Sri Lanka (IPS) on February 14. The minister said climate change has become a definite challenge to the society, a reality that all must accept.

“The Environment Ministry is spearheading our national effort to face this great challenge. As the Environment Minister, I find this as a good opportunity to interact with a group of stakeholders, whose professional contributions are very much useful for the successful implementation of national policies, programmes, projects and activities undertaken by the ministry,” he said.

Premajayantha said over the next decade, the island will be making major new investments in all sectors to overcome poverty and consolidate its status as a middle income country. “It has set ambitious national development targets. But climate change impacts, resulting from human-induced global warming, can delay or derail these plans; they can also make existing economic and socio-economic disparities worse,” he said.

“We are already beginning to see some of these impacts taking place -- they will get worse in the coming years and decades. To pursue our development agenda despite these pressures, we need an integrated approach to improve climate resilience in all sectors of economy and society,” the minister said....

Insurance and more for Sri Lanka's disaster preparedness

Rasika Somarathna in Daily News (Sri Lanka): The Disaster Management Ministry is planning to introduce a special insurance scheme for homes in identified disaster prone areas to protect property owners against potential losses during a natural calamity.

The insurance is to be extended to home owners whose houses are located within identified risk zones subject to recurring natural disasters such as floods, earth slips, quakes etc. An official said the insurance premiums would be borne by the ministry. A proposal in this regard has already been formulated.

Disaster Management Minister Mahinda Amaraweera recently said his ministry is prepared to demonstrate earthquake resistant construction techniques for those planning to build houses or other structures in earthquake prone areas.

Minister Amaraweera said his ministry will also introduce several other measures to lessen the impact of natural disasters in the coming year. Another such measure, according to the minister is the upgrading of the Meteorology Department. He said plans were afoot to install latest equipment available in the international market to upgrade the capacity of Meteorology Department and improve its prediction capability. The Doppler radar installed at the summit of Gongala Mountain in Deniyaya at Rs 400 million too will begin operations from next year, he said....

Weather extremes push Sri Lanka to adopt crop insurance

Amantha Perera in AlertNet: Sri Lanka plans to offer a national crop insurance scheme to help farmers cope with increasingly severe and disruptive weather and resulting crop losses. In presenting the national budget for 2013 recently, President Mahinda Rajapaksa said the government was moving toward ways of managing long-term severe weather events, particularly worsening drought.

“In the future, the economic losses of drought must be managed in a more meaningful manner. Therefore, I propose to implement a crop insurance scheme for all farmers,” he said.

This is the first occasion that such a scheme has been put in place. Officials said funds of around $1 million (Rs 1000m) will be set aside for the project through a National Insurance Trust Fund. The money would come from compulsory contributions from banking, financial and insurance companies. Farmers who benefit from a fertilizer subsidy scheme will also have to make a contribution of around one dollar (Rs 150) for every 50kg of fertilizer they draw under the subsidy scheme. Rajapaksa said that at least 100,000 farmers will benefit from the project if they lose their crops.

The new scheme comes in the wake of an eight month drought that has hurt the country’s staple rice production. The drought was broken during the last week of October – but by flash flooding brought on by Cyclone Nisha, which killed 10 people, damaged over 5,000 homes and left 200,000 people affected, according to the government’s Disaster Management Centre....

A pastoral scene in Sri Lanka, shot by Hash Milhan, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license

Drought hits northern rice farmers in Sri Lanka

IRIN: Officials in northern Sri Lanka’s Vavuniya District say 60 percent of the rice harvest could be lost if the dry weather continues.  “In Mannar District [in the north] we have records indicating that between 5,000 to 6,000 paddy hectares of the cultivated 10,000 are lost,” Ravi Vinanithambi, an environment officer for the North East Reawakening Programme (NERP – part of the Ministry of Economic Development), told IRIN.

Residents report no significant rain in the region for over eight months. In some villages like Visvamadhu in Kilinochchi District, they say the last rains of any substance were in September-November 2011.

“This year has been a big problem because most of the people in the region depend on agriculture heavily,” Vinanithambi said, noting despite some rains earlier this week,they needed several weeks to fill dried-up wells and reservoirs.

According to the most recent Sri Lanka Labour Force Survey released on 11 October by the government’s Census and Statistics Department, more than 37 percent of the over one million people in Northern Province depend on agriculture as their main source of livelihood…

A combine harvester at a rice farming collective in Kalmunai, Sri Lanka, shot by Frantishak, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

Water conservation “desperately” needed in Sri Lanka

IRIN: Rising temperatures, a late monsoon and dwindling rivers in parts of Sri Lanka are straining the energy sector and threatening crop yields. Local experts say water conservation has become an urgent necessity.

In Moneragala District, in the east of the island, a man who gave his name as Somadasa said he has farmed for most of his 50 years and cannot remember when the nearby river was this low during a monsoon season. He usually starts planting when the government releases river water to irrigate his fields, but this year he is still waiting.

“I don’t know when to plant this time, there is no indication when the water will be released,” he told IRIN. With a “southwest” monsoon that arrived almost four weeks later than usual, government officials have been unable to give any estimate of when they will open sluice gates.

He can skip one planting season until the next rains are expected, but what if those rains are also late, he asks. “I have no clue about how to manage water resources. I am used to it being made available to me,” he said.

Farmers have long viewed abundant water as an entitlement rather than a scarce resource, said Kusum Athukorala, who heads the Network of Women Water Professionals Sri Lanka (NetWwater), and Women for Water Partnership, two local NGOs that promote rural water management skills. As a result, people do not feel a need to ration usage, but “The situation here has been critical for some time.”...

A lake at Kotamale, Sri Lanka, shot by Anuradha Ratnaweera, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license

Women 'are the foot soldiers of climate change adaptation'

Amantha Perera in AlertNet: In 2006, when the Asian Development Bank (ADB)  decided to launch a multi-million dollar rural water project in eastern and north central regions of Sri Lanka, there was one overriding requirement – women would be placed in key positions. As a result, experts say, the $263 million program, aimed at providing drinking water to over 900,000 people by 2011, has been a particular success.

In the village of Talpothta, in the rural north-central Polonnaruwa District [of Sri Lanka], the village women’s association is now central to the proper functioning of the new water supply plant provided under the ADB programme. Its members visit the over 200 users, read meters and more importantly advise beneficiaries on water usage when drought sets in.  “We know how much is needed. Women do most of the household work like cooking (and) washing clothes. We ask our members to limit use when we have problems,” said Sheila Herath, an association member.

Kusum Athukorala, one of the country’s leading experts on water management, agrees that women are key to adapting effective measures to deal with water challenges and changing climate patterns. “Women are the foot soldiers of climate change adaptation,” said Athukorala who heads the Network of Women Water Professionals, Sri Lanka (NetWwater) and the Women for Water Partnership....

Women picking tea in Sri Lanka, shot by High Contrast, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Germany license

Climate change 'biggest threat' to food security

Amantha Perera in IPS: When it comes to expressing the threat to food security posed by changing climate patterns and extreme weather events in Asia and the Pacific, the Asian Development Bank (ADB) does not mince its words. "The greatest threat to food security is climate change," the Bank said in a 45-page report, ‘Food Security and Poverty in Asia and the Pacific: Key Challenges and Policy Issues’, released late last month.

The report’s findings ring especially true in Sri Lanka, where experts are increasingly expressing concerns about the twin crises of food security and global warming.  The ADB study looked at areas that could affect food security, such as trade policies, development, the demand for food and resource management and possible mitigation efforts. It tagged climate change as a key player in determining food security levels, as interventions needed to stem the impacts of global warming go beyond national borders and surpass the authority of any single government.

"Problems caused by climate change are much more difficult to resolve in the short term and will require long-term and internationally coordinated solutions," it said.

Sri Lankan climate change expert Riza Yehiya, an architect and sustainability consultant, echoed the ADB’s sentiments.  "The issues of climate change and food security in Sri Lanka are becoming alarming," he told IPS, adding that changing climate patterns combined with a lack of proper policies to mitigate adverse impact have put the South Asian island in a precarious position.

Though Sri Lanka is yet to experience protracted and deadly food shortages due to changing weather patterns, recent experiences have shown that its vital rice harvest does fluctuate wildly depending on rainfall....

A rice paddy in Matugama, Sri Lanka, shot by Freelk, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

Sri Lankan conservationists battle national park highway

Nicholas Milton in the Guardian (UK): As Sri Lankans prepare to celebrate the Sinhala or Buddhist New Year in April, conservationists will be quietly praying that a proposed major road through Wilpattu national park will finally be ruled illegal. Controversially funded by the Chinese government, the road has been the centre of a case sitting with the Sri Lankan supreme court for nearly two years. During that time it has become a legal cause celebre for those who believe the island's postwar tourist boom, which has seen it recently marketed as an eco-tourism destination, is now threatening its unique wildlife.

Wilpattu, on the west coast of the island, was a rebel stronghold during the long 26-year civil war against the Tamil Tigers. Today it is better known as Sri Lanka's largest park and home to leopards, Asian elephants and sloth bears. Development is prohibited in national parks but after peace was declared in May 2009, the government began work on a road right through Wilpattu, known as the New Mannar Road.

A 30-metre-wide swath was cut through the undergrowth, room enough for six lanes of traffic and a helipad was created to bring in workers. Over 22 miles had been cleared when on 5 May 2010 Environmental Foundation Limited filed a group legal action on behalf of Sri Lanka's four biggest environment groups in the supreme court to stop the construction. However, EFL believe there has still not been a verdict because the government is desperately trying to find a way around its own conservation laws...

Kudiramalai in Wilpattu National Park, Sri Lanka, shot by Freelk, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

'Farmers need to cultivate environmentally adaptable paddy varieties'

Priyanka Kurugala in the Daily News (Sri Lanka): Farmers need to be motivated to cultivate paddy varieties which are adaptable to changing environmental conditions to reach global targets of self-sufficiency, said Mahailuppallama Field Crops Research and Development Institute Acting Director Dr. WMW Weerakoon.

"Sea levels will rise due to climate change towards the end of this century. The sea levels would be between 20 to 59 cm. There could be direct impacts of the sea level rise through submergence and increased salinity levels of coastal paddy lands.

There could also be indirect impacts with difficulties in draining water in the inland paddy lands, he said. It is needed to develop saline tolerant rice varieties and associated technologies for saline flood prone lands, he said.

There is also an urgent need to develop varieties and associated technologies to overcome negative impacts of increasing air temperature, reducing availability of water quality, quantity and deteriorating soil environment with the rise in inland and coastal salinity, he said....

A paddy in Matugama, Sri Lanka, shot by Freelk, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license