|
|
 |
 |
 |
| Wednesday, 1 September 2004 |
 |
|
 |
Features | |
| News Business Features Editorial Security Politics World Letters Sports Obituaries
|
The Menik Ganga dried up nearly two months ago. The Uda Walawe reservoir has shrunk so badly that it looks a mere puddle relative to its earlier spread. Drinking water supply to large towns like Anuradhapura, Puttalam and Hambantota is in danger. It's official now. The dry zone is in drought. The media last week went to town with the stereotypical dismal snapshots of drought; families walking for miles for a bath, dried and cracked tank beds and women collecting muddy water for drinking. While there is no question that weather gods had a large hand in the state of the dry zone today, the 'disaster' it has become is more an issue of inaction and lethargy than climate. Floods and landslides are real natural 'disasters'. They happen too fast to prepare adequately and minimize the damage. (not that mitigation is impossible but it is certainly more difficult). But drought is nothing like that. We saw this drought happening. From way afar. When the last North-East monsoon failed to bestow the required rainfall, we knew that the dry zone's normal dry period would worsen this year. As June and July progressed, the signs of prolonged drought were already obvious. But it took the relevant authorities another month- until two weeks ago - to officially announce drought relief. At the press conference that day, the emphasis was on how the country really had no money to keep up the drought aid for the next two months. The huge humanitarian disaster happening in a large section of our own country was boiled down to figures and sanitized in to numbers and digits. At this point in time, relief is essential. There is no question. But the truth is, being a tropical country, where even the driest of areas receive more than 1000 mm of rainfall a year, Sri Lanka should not be complaining of drought at all. So the question is one of management and coordination, rather than a matter of evil weather gods glaring down on the poor dry zone. The same reasoning applies for wet-zone floods during the heavy south-west monsoon. Year after year the same areas suffer floods without a proper management or mitigation plan implemented. Drought, being a slow-onset natural disaster should be easier to mitigate. But year after year, the same scene is enacted at different scales- depending on a severity of the drought. Remember 2001? Water filled plastic cola bottles being transported in convoys to the drought-ridden dry zone? Hardly a lasting solution. The irony is that we have so many institutions and organizations that are mandated to seek and implement long-term solutions to this problem. From local authorities, to Provincial Departments of Social Service to the National Department of Social Service, the National Disaster Management Centre, the Human Disaster Management Council, the Ministry of Social Services, the Ministry of Water Resources and so on. Not only is there a dearth of action, there appears to be a lack of interest to find long-term solutions. A proper assessment of ground water has not been done in many drought ridden areas. Ill-planned river diversions and irrigation settlements are on the cards for other areas. Schemes that will gradually increase human density in regions already suffering water scarcity for most of the year. A well-coordinated effort is required to fight the problem in the long term. Harvesting more rainwater, rehabilitating more tanks and improving water storage, a change in cultivation patterns and methods, rethinking urban sprawl in water scarce areas -all these are components of what could be a national plan to overcome drought suffering. The time has certainly come to think beyond the short-term relief. |
|
News | Business | Features
| Editorial | Security
Produced by Lake House |
by Tharuka Dissanaike
