Impact of drought worse than that of floods:

Importance of drought management policy highlighted

By Ranil Wijayapala

* With impact of climate change, severity of droughts will increase

* Significant droughts once every 10 to 15 years

As the country recovers from a series of floods caused by increased rainfall throughout 2010, the authorities dealing with disaster situations are now focusing their attention on a possible drought situation that would hit the country in the future.

Disaster Management Minister Mahinda Amaraweera drew the attention of the nation towards this situation with the claim that they are now focusing on disaster mitigation mechanisms rather than just providing relief for disaster-affected people.

Minister Mahinda Amaraweera	W.U.L. Chandradasa

According to Minister Amaraweera, the impact of a drought is much higher than that of floods as droughts cause only negative impacts on the socio-economic fabric of the country.

According to Director Disaster Mitigation of the Disaster Management Centre, W.U.L. Chandradasa, preparedness for drought must be five times higher than that for facing a flood situation in the country though people do not pay much attention to drought conditions compared to floods.

“People don’t take droughts seriously as there are no instant losses of lives or property. But the overall impact of a drought is much higher compared to floods”, Chandradasa explained.

However, droughts are not an unnatural phenomenon in Sri Lanka since there have been nationally significant droughts once every 10 to 15 years. Past records indicate that moderate droughts of regional significance occur in five to 10 years while locally significant droughts occur in two to five years.

“Though this is the general pattern, some form of drought occur somewhere in the country every year. We know for certain that droughts will occur in the future too, but we do not know exactly when”, Chandradasa said.

So, constant preparedness for drought is a must on the part of the government as the government has to allocate millions of rupees in funds to assist drought-affected people each year though this may not be highlighted as in the case of flood-affected people.

“The severity of a drought depends not only on the duration, intensity and spatial extent of a specific drought episode, but also on the demands made by human activities and vegetation on a specific region’s water supply”, he explained.

According to assessments, an average of 11,077 hectares of paddy land get destroyed annually due to water shortage, in addition to crop losses in rain-fed highland cultivations causing huge economic loses to the nation.

The indirect losses, though extremely difficult to assess, cause long-term and devastating economic losses. Food scarcity, causing partial hunger and malnutrition among lactating mothers and children, retards physical and mental growth in the future generation, with lowered physical stamina and labour efficiency.

“Those in turn seriously affect the productivity of people, thus seriously affecting economic development”, he said.

Recovery process

Therefore, the Disaster Management Centre emphasises the necessity of a comprehensive national policy to mitigate droughts as recovering from a drought situation is not easy compared to the recovery process from a disaster such as a flood.

“With the impact of climate change, the severity of droughts will be increased in Sri Lanka”, Chandradasa said.

According to experts, countries across the globe are now experiencing rainy and wet weather conditions including floods, storms and snow weather conditions. These are expected to turn into dry conditions according to the patterns observed by weather forecasters.

“The first issue we have to attend to when facing a drought situation is finding a way of providing drinking water to the people”, Chandradasa said.

“The Disaster Management Centre is ready for this eventuality, with water bowsers to transport water from one area to the other”, he explained.

The districts of Puttalam, Kurunegala, Anuradhapura, Polonnaruwa, Moneragala and Hambantota and some parts of Vavuniya and Mullaitivu face regular droughts and these districts are equipped with water bowsers and tanks to provide water for the drought-affected people.

The Government annually allocates huge sums of money for the supply of drinking water for drought-affected people.

According to statistics, the Government allocated Rs. 16,693,828 in 2006, Rs.19,921,772 in 2007, Rs. 15,286,758 in 2008 and Rs.27,655,774 in 2009 for the supply of drinking water for drought- affected people.

Therefore, the Disaster Management Ministry is taking initiatives to preserve water by introducing new drought mitigation methods and educating the public about the methods of preserving water to face drought situations.

“We have promoted the ‘Pathas’ system to encourage the public to collect rainwater in a corner of their land”, Chandradasa said.

Through this system people can channel the water collected during the rainy season to a pit (pathas) by creating drains along the contours of the land.

“With this system we are expecting to increase the ground water level of the area, which would increase the water level of their wells”, he said. The Disaster Management Ministry has implemented this system in Buttala as a pilot project.

Pathas last for eight months in dry weather conditions. With the existence of pathas, the water table goes higher and higher and people can get water from their wells. If we have 100 pathas that would create an independent water resource in dry weather conditions”, he said.

However, this system cannot be applied in all areas as its success depends on the soil condition of the area.

“In some areas it changes the ground water levels, but in some areas it does not work”, Chandradasa said.

The restoration of ancient tank systems which have been destroyed due to negligence and other reasons has also been given serious thought by the Disaster Management Ministry and Disaster Management Centre.

Tank system

“Earlier, we had a very effective tank system. Some tanks were constructed to feed the underground water table”, he explained.

Some tanks were constructed according to the cascade system, connecting several tanks together. Once the main tank is filled with water, it will feed the other tanks.

Due to the existence of this cascade tank system, the country could face severe drought situations effectively.

Therefore, the Disaster Management Centre is implementing a project to restore the cascade tank system in some areas with the assistance of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).

Assistance from the Treasury and international organisations would be available for the restoration of the tank system with the participation of the community.

Tests are also being conducted to find varieties of paddy which can withstand dry weather conditions so that they can be propagated among paddy farmers for use during dry weather conditions.

“Another important issue is that in dry weather condition, the soil becomes more saline due to the high salt content. So we have to find varieties of paddy suitable for those conditions. This is also being done to face such drought situations”, Chandradasa explained.

During the rainy season, it is possible to recharge the ground water for cultivations.

“We receive adequate annual rainfall to the country. But the water is not retained in the soil due to deforestation and the felling of trees. Earlier, rain water seeped to the earth and drained to waterways systematically. Now the rain water directly drains into waterways”, he said.

Weather variables

The Meterological Department which comes under the Disaster Management Ministry has also focused its attention in improving its prediction capacity to capturing all variable weather patterns, enabling it to predict on drought conditions.

The Department has already taken an initiative to purchase equipment to improve the prediction capacity so that they can keep the community informed about drought situations and promote water conservation practices.

“We should have a national policy to find ways of facing a drought situation effectively. The Agriculture Department has to conduct research to find crops that can face drought conditions. The Water Board should decide to which areas it should provide water.

The Irrigation Department which provides water for agricultural purposes would decide how it should release water for agriculture purposes and collect rain water effectively”, he said.

“The Disaster Management Centre, as the apex body for coordinating disaster management activities in the country, can play the role of coordinator for developing the National Drought Management Policy and National Drought Management Plan to effectively face a drought situation that may hit the country, with a community-based approach”, Chandradasa said.