Stigende temperaturer og en sen monsun har ført til tørke og udtørrende floder i Sri Lanka. Landet har behov teknikker til at få det sparsomme vand til at række.
COLOMBO, 20 August 2012 (IRIN): In Moneragala District, in the east of the South Asian Island, a farmer called Somadasa said he has farmed for most of his 50 years and cannot remember when the nearby river was this low during a monsoon season.
Kusum Athukorala leads the Network of Women Water Professionals Sri Lanka (NetWwater), and Women for Water Partnership. According to him, farmers have long viewed abundant water as an entitlement rather than a scarce (sparsom) resource.
The NGOs are encouraging people to take steps immediately to save water. These include not drawing from the well until it is dry, using water pumps discriminately, spacing out the times when crops are watered, and maintaining water tanks and other traditional catchment equipment. “The ultimate goal is to give people the idea that is our water, not the government’s, to conserve,” said Athukorala.
The government needs to develop a policy on dredging (udgrave) canals and reservoirs regularly to maximize water retention (tilbageholdelse) protect water catchment areas from degradation (forringelse) and deforestation (skovrydning).
As a result of floods in 2011, the paddy harvest in Eastern Province fell by 39 percent, and by 3 percent in North Central Province. Though it is too soon to calculate the cost of the current dry spell, rice prices were nearly 11 percent higher in July than in the previous quarter.
Læs mere: http://www.irinnews.org/Report/96137/SRI-LANKA-Water-conservation-desperately-needed
