Sri Lankan rice farmers buffeted by flood, drought
May 17, 2012
By Amantha Perera
COLOMBO - Last year was one of extremes for the small Sri Lankan village of Verugal. Lying on the island's northeastern coast, Verugal began the year with incessant rainfall. Between January and February 2011, the east coast received a year's worth of rain, which destroyed more than 7,000 hectares of rice crops in Verugal and about 17% of the country's annual rice harvest. Some villages were cut off for weeks on end.
"I was working in a life jacket for over two weeks," said Ponnabalam Thanesvaran, head of the Verugal divisional secretariat and the highest-ranking government official for the region.
Just as the rains abated around September, Verugal fell foul of nature's wrath once more, this time weathering the flip side of the coin: drought. Thanesvaran told Inter Press Service (IPS) that between September and October his main task was providing drinking water to remote villages, some of which had been cut off by floods just nine months earlier. "It was incredible how, within less than a year, we had a flood and a drought," he observed.
In the run-up to next month's United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development, Rio+20, local experts are pushing for increased efforts to get the message on changing climate patterns out to the most affected and least informed populations - like rice farmers in rural Sri Lanka. Full Story>>>
May 17, 2012
By Amantha Perera COLOMBO - Last year was one of extremes for the small Sri Lankan village of Verugal. Lying on the island's northeastern coast, Verugal began the year with incessant rainfall. Between January and February 2011, the east coast received a year's worth of rain, which destroyed more than 7,000 hectares of rice crops in Verugal and about 17% of the country's annual rice harvest. Some villages were cut off for weeks on end.
"I was working in a life jacket for over two weeks," said Ponnabalam Thanesvaran, head of the Verugal divisional secretariat and the highest-ranking government official for the region.
Just as the rains abated around September, Verugal fell foul of nature's wrath once more, this time weathering the flip side of the coin: drought. Thanesvaran told Inter Press Service (IPS) that between September and October his main task was providing drinking water to remote villages, some of which had been cut off by floods just nine months earlier. "It was incredible how, within less than a year, we had a flood and a drought," he observed.
In the run-up to next month's United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development, Rio+20, local experts are pushing for increased efforts to get the message on changing climate patterns out to the most affected and least informed populations - like rice farmers in rural Sri Lanka. Full Story>>>
