Natural disasters and COVID-19

As the southwest monsoon begins in earnest, an already cash-strapped and overstretched Government and thinly-spread essential services will have to prepare to aid people displaced by floods and possible landslides. The public may have to step in to fill the gaps and provide support at a higher level with fewer resources this year.

The silver lining in this situation is that when it comes to annual floods there is a disaster management structure already in place that has been prepping for monsoon related impact. The COVID-19 outbreak adds a complex set of challenges on top of traditional resource constraints that will increase pressure on the disaster management system. 

Even relatively simple things like providing temporary shelter becomes complicated due to COVID-19 mitigation measures such as keeping people six feet apart, isolating different communities, and carrying out testing to prevent an outbreak. Other safeguards that have been put in place such as limiting travel between districts, weekend curfews, and limited access to dry goods increase the bottlenecks in providing relief.

In addition, families already made vulnerable by lack of livelihoods during the curfew could find it harder to recover from the double disasters. Given Sri Lanka’s high levels of near-poor, repeated disasters can push more and more families under the poverty line and make it harder for them and the next generation get back above the line. Already there are many worries about layoffs and daily wage earners struggling to survive. A natural disaster at this point could well be the worst thing for these people. 

The Southwest Monsoon is expected to arrive over Sri Lanka in mid to late May 2020. Colombo, Kalutara, Gampaha, Galle, Matara, Ratnapura and Kegalle Districts are at very high risk of monsoon impact. According to the National Department of Meteorology, an estimated 35,000 to 50,000 families may be displaced, based on analysis of previous floods and landslides. These are also areas that overlap for COVID-19, creating a new layer of emergency to deal with. During 2017 floods, which were the worst in recent years, as many as half a million people were displaced and it took months for people and businesses to recover. 

Both floods and landslides are closely related to land-use practices and the pressure of human activities over sensitive areas. Poor land-use planning and utilisation have been highlighted in the disasters from 2016 to 2018. Unstable river banks resulting from sand mining, loss of natural buffer zones, blocking downstream waterways and construction in retention areas all contribute to the increased risks of flooding and landslides.

Houses most affected in the 2016 flooding were of inadequate design; in the urban areas, 65% of the affected houses were makeshift or semi-permanent constructions. Some informal areas of the cities also lack infrastructure and services, which is creating significant exposure to hydrometeorological hazards. Informal settlements on the outskirts of the urban areas are built up on floodplains, which means that the poorest people are most vulnerable to flooding events and habitually end up displaced. In December 2019, flooding forced more than 15,000 people to leave their homes.

These repeated cycles of natural disasters hit the poor hardest and could prove to be even worse than usual as they come on top of the COVID-19 impact. Proactive policies, greater coordination and implementing longer term solutions are essential.