Climate change and natural disasters 

The damage to the environment and the landscape particularly in the highlands of Sri Lanka are massive following Cyclone

Ditwah. Some landmark areas have either been obliterated or left massively damaged due to flooding and landslides.

The historic Peradeniya Royal Botanical Gardens, one of the most beloved places in the country, has suffered massive damage that those in charge of the botanical garden are unsure whether the plants in its nurseries will survive after floodwaters swept through the gardens. Among the damage is to the plants in the orchid nursery including those named in honour of foreign and local dignitaries while endemic plants too have either got destroyed or damaged.

The overall damage to the gardens is estimated at over Rs. 120 million but more than the monetary damage, its landscape too has been permanently damaged.

In other areas, the floods and landslides has also uprooted many fully grown tea plantations.

Greenpeace South Asia, the independent environmental campaigning network has concluded that human-induced climate change significantly intensified the extreme rainfall that struck Sri Lanka during the Cyclonic Ditwah.

Greenpeace said that in Sri Lanka, heavy five-day rainfall events like those triggered by Cyclone Ditwah are now 28% to 160% more intense because of the 1.3°C of warming already caused by greenhouse gas emissions. Warmer sea surface temperatures in the North Indian Ocean, recorded at 0.2°C above the 1991–2020 average, added substantial energy that fuelled the storm’s rapid intensification and destructive rainfall.

Rapid urbanisation and construction in flood-prone areas increased exposure. Failures in ICT infrastructure meant early warnings did not reach many people in time, with low-income and marginalized communities bearing the brunt of the cascading failures in transport, energy, and essential services, the Group said.

One thing is clear that climate change is something that needs to be taken seriously. While countries like Sri Lanka may not be able to make a big impact on a  global scale, the country has to put in place measures that would ensure that people are moved out of high risk areas and relocated to safer areas.

President Anura Kumara Dissanayake has already pledged that those displaced in landslide prone areas will not be allowed to return to their old places of dwelling and new land would be allocated to them. This is a massive task because it would involve paying compensation to people who are being relocated for the lands they are losing and then assisting them to rebuild their new homes. There will be the issues of finding new schools for children, hospitals, transports services etc. which the Government seems determined to do as expeditiously as possible. It is a big task to ask of any Government given the scale of the disaster hence people too will need to be patient.

There is a role for the public too to play in dealing with weather induced disasters. There have been multiple warnings from the National Building Research Organization (NBRO) for people to vacate certain areas but they have resisted such requests by jealously holding onto their lands. Now due to the cyclone’s impact, some have lost their lives, their homes and lands and been forced to move out of these areas. It is important that the public cooperate with the authorities in such instances. Natural disasters can happen at any time and it is not always easy to predict their outcome but in the case of Cyclone Ditwah, timely warnings and adherence to the rules on building in high-risk areas would have saved lives.

Being an island nation, Sri Lanka must take climate change and other environmental related changes seriously. The predictions are that this kind of disaster will become even more intense as nature unleashes its fury. It is important to be prepared so we don’t face the same consequences once again.