Forest Restoration: Where Does Sri Lanka Stand?
This year, the International Day of Forests is marked under the apt theme “Forest restoration: a path to recovery and well-being”. Forest restoration is one of the priority areas for mitigating the effects of climate change. Restoration and sustainable management of forests will help absorb atmospheric pollutants, re-build natural habitats and sustain life on earth.
This blog discusses Sri Lanka’s declining forest cover and offers suggestions on how the drivers of deforestation can be countered.
Weathering Disasters: Why it Pays to be Prepared
Disasters such as COVID-19 can significantly impede development. While it is difficult to avoid being affected by disasters, disaster preparedness can reduce the costs, and quicken the recovery.
Linking Disaster Risk Management into Economic Policy Planning in Sri Lanka
Sri Lanka was ranked as the second most affected country by the impacts of weather-related losses in 2017, according to the Global Climate Risk Index 2019. Worryingly, the country’s situation has worsened since 2016. This highlights Sri Lanka’s vulnerability to climate impacts and the need for effective policies. The good news is that the 2019 Budget proposes several measures to improve Sri Lanka’s disaster resilience. In this blog, Kanchana Wickramasinghe discusses the challenges and gaps in disaster management and the ways in which Sri Lanka can improve its capacity to face these calamities.
Women in Times of Disaster: Gender Dimension of Disaster Management in Sri Lanka
It has become apparent that natural disasters have a gender aspect, where women are often affected more severely than men. A woman’s pre-disaster familial responsibilities are magnified and expanded by a disaster, often with significantly less support and resources. The author argues that, given that women are often in a disadvantaged position in many contexts, the promotion of gender equality implies that attention need to be paid to female empowerment in disaster management.
Weathering the Storm: Improving Disaster Resilience of Rural Workers in Sri Lanka
Climate change and related vagaries of weather have increased the vulnerability of the Sri Lankan population to natural disasters. Rural households and livelihoods are more affected by such calamities, which increases the risk of rural families sliding into poverty. As such, Nisha Arunatilake argues that improving the quality of jobs and livelihoods of the rural population is important to build these communities’ resilience to such natural disasters.
Demystifying Hawala/Undiyal – The Not So Dismal Science:[…] believed that informal fund transfer operations in Sri Lanka have expanded considerably due to the wide gap between the…