Gathering Storms
By Navam Niles –October 21, 2015
Navam Niles
Sri Lanka faces severe climate risks and civil society needs to get ready
At home and abroad, we are experiencing a historically unprecedented pace of climate change that is resulting in severe weather distortions including rising sea-levels, melting glaciers and irregular monsoons.
In response, Sri Lanka must start adapting. There are two ways of adapting to climate change: we could either reduce our sensitivity to climate change by investing in technology and infrastructure; or we could reduce our exposure to climate change by diversifying our social, economic and cultural behaviour. Deciding the appropriate balance between the two approaches requires a public debate that is thoughtful, inclusive and transparent. This is a responsibility best left to civil society, but before it can begin setting the stage for this debate, it must develop a basic understanding of the various climate risks facing Sri Lanka. These climate risks don’t affect everyone equally and our responses cannot ignore that fact.
Risk is simply the probability of loss. Climate risks, like other risks, broadly fall into two categories: those that affect a specific individuals or households at a time (i.e. idiosyncratic risks); and those that affect most, if not all households at the same time (i.e. systemic risks).
An example of an idiosyncratic risk may be a drought that causes a particular famer in a village to experience a serious loss income. An example of a system risk would be a drought that causes the entire village to experience economic decline. Since systemic are more threatening, they deserve our immediate attention. Admittedly, there are many systemic risks, but I will briefly focus on a few of them involving our energy security, food security, and the potential losses due to sea-level rise.
Energy security is defined as the uninterrupted availability of energy sources at an affordable price. According to the Asian Development Bank, which studied the costs of adaptation in South Asia recently, Sri Lanka could face an energy demand-supply gap of about 1.33 TWh by 2050s (that figure is an average of the various predictions). In other words, Sri Lanka will lack the energy necessary to power the equivalent of 250,000 homes. Moreover, we are increasingly dependent on fossil fuels such as coal and oil, which accounted for about 41% of total energy in 2013. The increasing reliance on fossil fuels is costly. According to the Ministry of Petroleum Industries, Sri Lanka spends an annual average of about $5 billion on crude oil and other petroleum products. At-least in the case of energy, it is our response to the problem (turning to fossil fuels) which is the main concern. But with agriculture, the problem maybe the lack of response. Read More
