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I have twice been to Sri Lanka and have always had the impression of a green and verdant land where everything grows in abundance.

That is changing very rapidly, as the following two articles demonstrate

Blistering Drought Leaves the Poorest High and Dry

By Amantha Perera

A villager prepare to dig a deep well by hand in the drought-stricken village of Tunukkai in Sri Lanka's northern Mullaithivu District. Credit: Amantha Perera/IPS

IPS News,

29 September, 2014

COLOMBO, Sep 29 2014 (IPS) - The last time there was mud on his village roads was about a year ago, says Murugesu Mohanabavan, a farmer from the village of Karachchi, situated about 300 km north of Sri Lanka’s capital, Colombo.

“Since last October we have had nothing but sun, all day,” the 40-year-old father of two school-aged children told IPS. If his layman’s assessment of the rain patterns is off, it is by a mere matter of weeks.

At the disaster management unit of the Kilinochchi District Secretariat under which Mohanabavan’s village falls, reports show inadequate rainfall since November 2013 – less than 30 percent of expected precipitation for this time of year.

“We don’t have any savings left; I still need to complete a half-built house and send two children to school. The nightmare continues." 

-- Murugesu Mohanabavan, a farmer from the village of Karachchi, 300 km north of Sri Lanka’s capital, Colombo

Sri Lanka is currently facing a severe drought that has impacted over 1.6 million people and cut its crop yields by 42 percent, according to government analyses. But a closer look at the areas where the drought is at its worst shows that the poorest have been hit hardest.

Of the drought-affected population, over half or roughly 900,000 people, are from the Northern and Eastern Provinces of the country, regions that have been traditionally poor, dependent on agriculture and lacking strong coping mechanisms or infrastructure to withstand the impact of natural disasters.

Take the northern Kilinochchi district, where out of a population of some 120,000, over 74,000 are affected by the drought; or the adjoining district of Mullaithivu where over 56,000 from a population of just above 100,000 are suffering the impacts of inadequate rainfall.

The vast majority of residents in these districts are war returnees, who bore the brunt of Sri Lanka’s protracted civil war that ended in May 2009. Displaced and dodging the crossfire of fierce fighting between government forces and the now-defunct Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) during the last stages of the conflict, these civilians began trickling back into devastated villages in late 2010.

Despite a massive three-billion-dollar mega infrastructure development plan for the Northern Province, poverty remains rampant in the region. According to poverty data that was released by the government in April, four of the five districts in the north fared poorly.

While the national poverty headcount was 6.7 percent, major districts in the north and east recorded much higher figures: 28.8 percent in Mullaithivu, 12.7 percent in Kilinochchi, 8.3 percent in Jaffnna and 20.1 percent in Mannar.

The figures are worlds apart from the mere 1.4 percent and 2.1 percent recorded in the Colombo and Gampaha Districts in the Western Province.

“The districts in the North were already reeling under very high levels of poverty, which would have certainly accentuated since then due to the prolonged drought to date,” said Muttukrishna Saravananthan, who heads the Point Pedro Institute of Development based in northern Jaffna.

Mohanabavan told IPS that even though he has about two acres of agriculture land that had hitherto provided some 200,000 rupees (1,500 dollars) in income annually, the dry weather has pushed him into debt.

“We don’t have any savings left; I still need to complete a half-built house and send two children to school,” he explained, adding that there is no sign of respite. “The nightmare continues,” he said simply.

Agriculture accounts for 10 percent of Sri Lanka’s national annual gross domestic product (GDP) of some 60 billion rupees (about 460 million dollars). In primarily rural provinces in the north and east, at least 30 percent of the population depends on an agriculture-based income.

Kugadasan Sumanadas, the additional secretary for disaster management at the Kilinochchi District Secretariat, said that limited programmes to assist the drought-impacted population have been launched since the middle of the year.

Around 37,000 persons get daily water transported by tankers and there are a set number of cash-for-work programmes in the district that pay around 800 rupees (about six dollars) per person per day, for projects aimed at renovating water and irrigtation networks.

But to carry out even the limited work underway now, a weekly allocation of over nine million rupees is needed, money that is slow in coming.

“But the bigger problem is if it does not rain soon, then we will have to travel out of the province to get water, more people will need assistance for a longer period, that means more money [will be required],” Sumanadas said.

In April this year, a joint assessment by the World Food Programme and the government warned that half the population in the Mullaithivu district and one in three people in the Kilinochchi district were food insecure.

Sumanadas is certain that in the ensuing four months, the figure has gone up.

Overall, crop production has decreased by 42 percent compared to 2013 levels, while rice yields fell to 17 percent below last year’s output of four million metric tons.

In fact, the government decided to lift import bans on the staple rice stocks in April and is expected to make up for at least five percent of harvest losses through imports.

The main water source in the district, the sprawling Iranamadu Reservoir – 50 square km in size, with the capacity to irrigate 106,000 acres – is a gigantic dust bowl these days, the official said. That scenario, however, is not limited to the north and east.

“All reservoir levels are down to around 30 percent in the island,” Ivan de Silva, the secretary to the minister of irrigation and water management, told IPS.

He attributes the debilitating impact of the drought to two factors working in tandem: the increasing frequency of extreme weather events and the lack of proper water management.

“In the past we excepted a severe drought every 10 to 15 years, now it is happening almost every other year,” de Silva said.

A similar drought in late 2012 also impacted close to two million people on this island of just over 20 million people, and forced agricultural output down to 20 percent of previous yields.

That drought however was broken by the onset of floods brought on by hurricane Nilam in late 2012.

“We should have policies that allow us to manage our water resources better, so that we can better meet these changing weather patterns,” he said.

The country is slowly waking up to the grim reality that a changing climate requires better management. This week the government launched a 100-million-dollar climate resilience programme that will spend the bulk of its funds, around 90 million dollars, on infrastructure upgrades.

Of this, 47 million dollars will go towards improving drainage networks and water systems, while 36 million will go towards fortifying roads and seven million will be poured into projects to improve school safety in disaster-prone areas.

Part of the money will also be allocated to studying the nine main river basins around the country for better flood and drought management policies.

S M Mohammed, the secretary to the ministry of disaster management, admitted that national coping levels were not up to par when she said at the launch of the programme on Sep. 26, “Our country must change from a tradition of responding [to natural disasters] to a culture of resilience.”

Such a policy, if implemented, could bring a world of change to the lives of millions who are slowly cooking in the blistering sun.

The following article was written back in May and describes the capital Colombo which usually gets a lot of rain

Sri Lanka Waits in Vain for the Rain

The lack of a national water management policy is hampering Sri Lanka's efforts to tackle recurring droughts. Credit: Amantha Perera/IPS

IPS News,

29 September, 2014

OLOMBO, May 30 2014 (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.

No rain, no rice

“The problem is that this is not a one-off drought, this is the third big drought in three years." -- Rajith Punyawardena, chief climatologist at the department of agriculture

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.

According to a recent update from the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO), Sri Lanka only produced 2.4 million metric tons of paddy during the main harvest in 2014, compared to around 2.8 million last year.

The FAO predicted that overall paddy output on the island in 2014 was likely to record a 19 percent loss from the previous year, with an expected production of 3.8 million metric tons – eight percent less than the five-year average yield since 2014.

Weerakkodiarchchilage Premadasa, a farmer from Thanamalvila in Sri Lanka’s southeastern Uva province, told IPS he had already lost half of his two acres of paddy to the drought. “If the rains don’t come, or are too weak, I will have to mortgage the house,” he said.

High demand and predictions of further losses pushed rice prices up by 23 percent this past April.

Meanwhile, a report compiled last month by the World Food Programme (WFP), together with Sri Lanka’s ministries of economic development and disaster management, detailed the country’s precarious situation vis-à-vis erratic weather, including the drought’s potential impact on food security and livelihoods.

In affected regions across the northern, eastern and northwestern provinces, over 768,000 persons out of a total population of 8.3 million have been identified as food insecure, double the 2013 figure. In addition, 18 percent of all households in over 15 districts in those same regions were consuming low-calorie diets.

Over 67 percent of the affected population are farmers who rely heavily on irrigated water for their livelihoods and daily subsistence. An unbroken string of extreme weather events since 2011 has heightened food insecurity and severely impacted rural populations’ resilience to natural disasters like droughts and floods, the report added.

Experts say the northern province, which accounts for 10 percent of the national paddy harvest, is particularly vulnerable. It lost over 60 percent of an estimated 300,000-metric-ton harvest in April, according to Sivapathan Sivakumar, the provincial director for agriculture.

Having borne the brunt of the island’s protracted civil conflict, which finally closed its bloody 30-year chapter in 2009, the people here have shouldered about as much hardship as they can take. A possible debt-trap, caused by repeated losses in harvest, has them on the edge, Sivakumar added.

“We have to come up with a major assistance plan to help them,” the official told IPS.

According to the joint WFP-governmental report, the northern districts of Mullaitivu and Kilinochchi have been hardest hit, with 49 percent and 31 percent of their respective populations identified as food insecure as a result of drought.

Urgent need for national planning

Those who are monitoring the situation say the drought will bring more than just hunger. Already food shortages are taking a disproportionate toll on low-income households, who have no safety net against harvest losses and rising prices.

In the districts surveyed by the WFP, a full 50 percent of households were spending over 65 percent of their monthly income, about 20 dollars, on food.

Poverty levels in these areas are also rising, with families reporting damage to agricultural land, limited employment opportunities as a result of scarce yields and significant reductions to their income.

“The average income in these areas is reported to be 37 percent lower than the national poverty line [of 29 dollars] for the month of March,” the report found.

In some areas, there was a big gap between expected income and actual income. In the northwestern Kurunegala district, a relatively rich region, actual income was 76 dollars, 81 percent below the expected income of 190 dollars.

In the northern Vavuniya district, actual income for the month of April was 67 percent below expected income.

The WFP has recommended the immediate commencements of six months of emergency assistance to the worst affected populations, but officials say this is easier said than done.

“The problem is that this is not a one-off drought, this is the third big drought in three years,” Punyawardena told IPS. “We need a national plan to assess and deal with the impact of extreme weather events.”

A drought between December 2011 and October 2012 affected 1.8 million people in the same regions currently enduring the dry spell, according to assessments by the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies. During that time, total harvest losses were feared to be between 15 and 20 percent.

So far, the only drought-related move has come from the ministry of agriculture, which has recommended that 35 percent of the 779,000 hectares of land under paddy cultivation be used for crops that require less water.

But Punyawardena believes that paddy farmers steeped in traditional farming practices are unlikely to change their methods or crops quickly. Such a move, he said, “needs time and a bit more work.”

As Premadasa, the farmer from the Uva province, pointed out, “Farmers like me need advice at the start of the planting season so we can plan accordingly. We get some information, but we need more detailed updates.”

Similar long-term planning will also be required to cushion the blow a weak monsoon could deliver to the country’s energy sector.

The Ceylon Electricity Board reported that as of the last week of May, hydro power was only meeting 11.8 percent of the country’s energy needs, compared to 46 percent during previous monsoon seasons.

Water experts told IPS there is an urgent need for an integrated national water management policy that takes note of fluctuating rain patterns.

“It will allow for national-level planning of water resources, identifying and prioritising needs and acting accordingly,” Kusum Atukorale, who chairs the Sri Lanka Water Partnership, told IPS.

Such a policy, she said, would allow for the kind of countrywide planning that is woefully lacking right now.

Until the government puts its best foot forward, the people of Sri Lanka can do little more than look to the skies and pray for the rain to fall.

Falling off the map: did India notice floods in northeast?

Hindustan Times,

4 October, 2014

Assam’s valleys are used to floods. But what hit the state’s western region, bordering Meghalaya, last month was unprecedented; people there had never imagined that killer waters would rise up in moments and sweep their entire lives away.

Ask cousins Nayan and Rupam, 13. They both lost their parents when a flash flood — the result of incessant rainfall from September 20 to 23 — struck Kamarpara, a village of potters 100 km west of Guwahati.

River Singra, flowing down from the hills of adjoining Meghalaya to join the Brahmaputra downstream, never seemed like a threat to these villagers on higher ground. “We shifted here from a flood-prone area. We were wrong to think that the floods wouldn’t chase us,” says village elder Nakul Kumar, 69.

In Dilinga village nearby, Padma Das, 66, recounts the ‘water attack’. “Suddenly, we found ourselves in 10 feet of water. Our houses are damaged and paddy fields ruined,” he says.

These Assam villages were perhaps luckier than Bholarbitha in Meghalaya’s West Garo Hills district. River Jinjiram, a tributary of the Brahmaputra, wiped out more than 80% of this village’s 300 homes.“Our village used to be inundated every monsoon, but this time was different. The current of the water was too strong; it was as if we were hit by a cyclone in liquid form,” says Zubair Hussain.

Villages in this part of Meghalaya, close to Bangladesh, are acquainted with Bordoichila, the annual springtime storm eulogised in Assamese folklore. But this year’s floods were an unprecedented disaster.

Meteorologists attribute it to unusually high post-monsoon rain, but ecologists blame it on climate change, encroachment on hill slopes and a degradation and even partial destruction of a network of wetlands that once were natural absorbers of excess rainwater.

In Meghalaya, chief minister Mukul Sangma admitted that illegal stone quarries have affected the ecology of the hills and the course of rivers.

“Letting people [mostly migrants] settle on riverbanks and sandbars has complicated matters,” says environment scientist JD Goswami. “All this is making the flooding more intense and more widespread.”

He has a point; this year, most of the 179 victims across Arunachal Pradesh, Assam and Meghalaya were from areas beyond traditional flood-prone zones. And in the urban bustle of Guwahati, where a construction boom has claimed many beels or expansive ponds, a total of six died from drowning, electrocution and landslides.

Rescue operations began fairly promptly, as the affected areas have an active Border Security Force presence, in addition to the Army and units of the National Disaster Response Force.

Union minister of state for home Kiren Rijiju and union minister of state for sports and youth affairs Sarbananda Sonowal — both originally from the region — responded relatively quickly on behalf of the Centre, arriving to take stock of the situation.

But the victims, particularly in Meghalaya, complained of not receiving adequate relief.

This is a persistent problem in the flood-prone north-east. Though 179 people have been killed by flooding here in 2014 alone — 68 in Assam, 56 in Arunachal Pradesh, and 55 in Meghalaya — only Rs. 887 crore has been allocated in relief by the Centre; Rs. 674 crore of this for Assam. By comparison, when the city of Mumbai was inundated in the 26/7 deluge of 2005 — nine years ago — the Centre allocated Rs. 476 crore in relief funds.

Meanwhile, across 28 districts in the north-east — 23 of these in Assam — floods have caused losses worth an estimated Rs. 4,350 crore in infrastructure damage and crop loss this year alone, with Assam accounting for Rs. 2,010 crore of this loss.

“We are trying our best to provide succour to the victims besides offering compensation to families of those who have died,” says Assam chief minister Tarun Gogoi.

Meanwhile, even online — where some local NGOs have gone to try and raise funds and material for relief operations — the response has been nothing like the outpouring, say, in the wake of the recent Kashmir floods.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi has announced Rs. 2 lakh as compensation for the families of each person killed, promising to do more for the region as rain-bearing clouds threaten more havoc over the coming weeks. For the time being, though, the states and Centre are still arguing over who should do how much.

As Patricia Mukhim, editor of The Shillong Times, says: “The north-east will always remain a periphery. It needs bombs and blood and dead bodies to make news.”

Massive Pacific Coast die off of starfish continues, may be harbinger of climate change

Seafood News,

2 October, 2014

A grisly horror show is playing out along the West Coast of North America. Remains of millions of dead and dying sea stars, commonly known as starfish, litter the shoreline from Vancouver to San Diego.

Those stars are the victims of a swift and brutal illness called "wasting syndrome."

No one yet knows the exact causes of the epidemic. Some evidence suggests the outbreak is linked to warming ocean temperatures or other changes in the ocean due to climate change.

Sea stars are, in a way, the canary in the coal mine of the ocean...

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