scholarly journals Climate change impacts on crops in Sri Lanka

2021 ◽  
2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
S.P.M. Dasandara ◽  
◽  
U. Kulatunga ◽  
M.J.B. Ingirige ◽  
T. Fernando ◽  
...  

The earth’s climate has changed throughout history and climate change can be identified as an inevitable phenomenon which is being experienced by the whole world. When considering the Sri Lankan context, it is no different to the global context in that the country’s climate has already changed. Sri Lanka, being an island state, is vulnerable to many climate change impacts including high-temperature levels, adverse weather events, sea level rising, and changes in precipitation patterns. The many challenges that arise from these climate-related issues are projected to continue through this century and beyond. Thus, climate change mitigation and adaptation have become the most appropriate ways to restrain these climate change challenges in Sri Lanka. It is paramount to get a broad understanding of how disastrous these climate change challenges are, prior to implementing appropriate responses to overcome them. This urges the need for conducting an in-depth investigation of prevailing climate change challenges in Sri Lanka. Thus, this study presents the prevailing climate change challenges facing Sri Lanka through a conceptual framework, that has been developed based on the existing literature. The developed framework reveals how these prevailing climate changes can lead to a number of challenges. These challenges were identified under three main categories as economic, social, and environmental challenges. The knowledge generated through this literature review will be the focus of future research.


2017 ◽  
Vol 2 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
J. Dananjaya Kottawa-Arachchi ◽  
◽  
Madawala A. Wijeratne ◽  

Water ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (9) ◽  
pp. 1218
Author(s):  
Hemakanth Selvarajah ◽  
Toshio Koike ◽  
Mohamed Rasmy ◽  
Katsunori Tamakawa ◽  
Akio Yamamoto ◽  
...  

Climate change is increasingly sensed by nations vulnerable to water-related disasters, and governments are acting to mitigate disasters and achieve sustainable development. Uncertainties in General Circulation Models’ (GCM) rainfall projections and seamless long-term hydrological simulations incorporating warming effects are major scientific challenges in assessing climate change impacts at the basin scale. Therefore, the Data Integration and Analysis System (DIAS) of Japan and the Water Energy Budget-based Rainfall-Runoff-Inundation model (WEB-RRI) were utilized to develop an integrated approach, which was then applied to the Mahaweli River Basin (MRB) in Sri Lanka to investigate climate change impacts on its hydro-meteorological characteristics. The results for the Representative Concentration Pathway (RCP8.5) scenario from four selected GCMs showed that, with an average temperature increase of 1.1 °C over the 20 years in future (2026 to 2045), the basin will experience more extreme rainfall (increase ranging 204 to 476 mm/year) and intense flood disasters and receive sufficient water in the future climate (inflow increases will range between 11 m3/s to 57 m3/s). The socio-economic damage due to flood inundation will also increase in the future climate. However, qualitatively, the overall trend of model responses showed an increasing pattern in future meteorological droughts whereas there is uncertainty in hydrological droughts. Policymakers can utilize these results and react to implementing soft or hard countermeasures for future policymaking. The approach can be implemented for climate change impact assessment of hydro-meteorology in any other river basin worldwide.


2021 ◽  
Vol 2021 ◽  
pp. 1-19
Author(s):  
Charuni Wickramarachchi ◽  
Jayanga T. Samarasinghe ◽  
Yousif Alyousifi ◽  
Upaka Rathnayake

Atmospheric moisture loading can cause a great impact on the performance and integrity of building exteriors in a tropical climate. Buildings can be highly impacted due to the changing climate conditions over the world. Therefore, it is important to incorporate the projected changes of moisture loads in structural designs under changing climates. The moisture index (MI) is widely used in many countries as a climate-based indicator to guide the building designs for their durability performance. However, this was hardly considered in structural designs in Sri Lanka, even though the country is one of the most affected countries under climate change. Therefore, this study investigates future climate change impacts on the environmental moisture in terms of MI, which can be used in climate zoning, investigating indoor air quality, understanding thermal comfort and energy consumption, etc. The moisture index was found as a function of the drying index (DI) and wetting index (WI) to the whole country for its four rainfall seasons. The temporal and spatial distributions were plotted as MI maps and showcased under two categories; including historical MI maps (1990–2004) and future projected MI maps (2021–2040, 2041–2070, and 2071–2100). Future projected MI maps were constructed using bias-corrected climatic data for two RCP climatic scenarios (RCP4.5 and RCP8.5). Results showed that the temporal and spatial variations of MIs are justifiable to the country’s rainfall patterns and seasons. However, notable increases of MIs can be observed for future projected MIs in two seasons, and thus a careful investigation of their impacts should be assessed in terms of the construction of buildings and various agricultural activities. Therefore, the outcome of this research can be essentially used in policy implementation in adapting to the ongoing climate changes in Sri Lanka.


2017 ◽  
Vol 08 (03) ◽  
pp. 1740006 ◽  
Author(s):  
BABATUNDE O. ABIDOYE ◽  
PRADEEP KURUKULASURIYA ◽  
ROBERT MENDELSOHN

A survey of farmers in Bangladesh, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Thailand, and Vietnam reveals that farmers are keenly aware of even slight changes in their climate. Over 90% of the farmers interviewed perceived small changes in temperature or precipitation patterns where they lived. Over half claimed to have changed their irrigation, timing, or crop choices because of climate change. Although the link between perceived changes and stated adaptations is weak, farmers are aware of the types of changes they need to make in response to climate change in South-East Asia. Adaptation responses must be firmly grounded in not only local conditions, but also the views of participants at the front lines of climate change impacts. The knowledge base of farmers grappling with the challenges of climate change must be taken into account when policy responses to support adaptation are formulated.


Author(s):  
Mahinda Senevi Gunaratne ◽  
R. B. Radin Firdaus ◽  
Shamila Indika Rathnasooriya

AbstractThis study explored food security and climate change issues and assessed how food sovereignty contributes to addressing the climate change impacts on entire food systems. The study aimed to contextualise food security, climate change, and food sovereignty within Sri Lanka’s current development discourse by bringing global learning, experience, and scholarship together. While this paper focused on many of the most pressing issues in this regard, it also highlighted potential paths towards food sovereignty in the context of policy reforms. This study used a narrative review that relied on the extant literature to understand the underlying concepts and issues relating to climate change, food security and food sovereignty. Additionally, eight in-depth interviews were conducted to obtain experts’ views on Sri Lanka’s issues relating to the thematic areas of this study and to find ways forward. The key findings from the literature review suggest that climate change has adverse impacts on global food security, escalating poverty, hunger, and malnutrition, which adversely affect developing nations and the poor and marginalised communities disproportionately. This study argues that promoting food sovereignty could be the key to alleviating such impacts. Food sovereignty has received much attention as an alternative development path in international forums and policy dialogues while it already applies in development practice. Since the island nation has been facing many challenges in food security, poverty, climate change, and persistence of development disparities, scaling up to food sovereignty in Sri Lanka requires significant policy reforms and structural changes in governance, administrative systems, and wider society.


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