We MUST be More Engaged: Climate Change Effects are Unlikely to be Kind!
The inability of Sri Lankan citizens to engage properly with critical issues on time presents the greatest of risks to the society. Needless to say, it is sad that the country ended up in its current, precarious state due to a financial crisis brought about by wicked and corrupt politicians, combined with ignorant and incompetent public servants who are now trying to blame COVID! The Supreme Court recently said that — Not me — and also pointed to the culprits!
Notwithstanding the economic decay, as a scientist, I worry about energy and water supplies, land clearing, sand extraction, illegal developments around ancient tanks, elephant deaths and many other serious issues that should cause urgent concern in our Motherland. As politics consumes daily discourses, climate change is looming as the largest threat that the island faces.
The inadequate capacity for global engagement in scientific disciplines (and other fields like humanities) is a personal shock to me. This is a malady that has plagued the country for a long time, although it wasn’t like this until recent decades. Sri Lanka’s rich publishing history, in all fields of endeavour (books, monographs, research articles, local journals, etc.) attests to the fact that the decay occurred only in the last 30 or so years. Readers of this article can then work out what dominant and influential factors coincided with and may have caused the decline.
The terrorist war to divide the country certainly wasn’t the only factor. Intellectual discourses decayed over about three decades. In this period, politics interfered with all aspects of public life including how institutions set their goal and run their mandates, in line with the country’s development goals. The future will require ‘de-coupling’ of this interference — if we want to save a large number of public institutions and work towards getting the country out of trouble.
The island’s water supplies (quantity) and quality of ‘drinking water’ are looming as potential disasters that might stump a large section of the population. Drinking water is certainly one of the greatest challenges the country faces as El-Nino takes hold from 2023 and unfolds over the next few years. The weather gods are not going to be kind to any country; Sri Lanka also will not be spared.
Every day, there are continuous conversations in this regard in the Asian-Pacific region, including Australasia, and elsewhere. The problem is engineers and scientists, dealing with water resources in Sri Lanka, seem rather distracted and disengaged in these conversations. Media articles and discourses don’t seem to focus on this critical issue in our Motherland. This is indeed the time for ‘constructively engaging’ with the climate change issue and impending scenarios without the ugly political discourses enveloping the island.
The Year 2023 is likely to be declared the hottest in the history of humankind. Rising Carbon dioxide (CO2) levels are now well past 420 parts per million (ppm). It was 421.8 on 14th December, measured at Mauna Loa Observatory, Hawaii (https://www.co2.earth/daily-co2). The resultant global warming effects are already causing havoc in weather patterns in many parts of the world.
The island should plan for prolonged droughts and enormous pressures on water supplies. Not just millions of people in rural areas, but the urban population will also suffer due to water shortages and disruption to power supplies. The shenanigans in that bearpit, called the Parliament, are so disruptive that one could excuse the public servants for worrying primarily about their own existence, instead of focusing on water resources, wildlife or impending climate change effects.
Disengagement is a Malady to be redressed
In day-to-day discourses, political corruption, daylight robbery, drug use, maladministration, poverty, murders, rapes and suicides, thuggery, cricket, stories about the underworld, etc. dominate the discourses in Sri Lanka. What a shame! Singaporean and Malaysian colleagues have laughed directly in my face about that political joke about Sri Lanka rising as “A Miracle of Asia”!
The destruction of the island’s agriculture with imported, excrement-laden, organic farming, was a ‘death wish’. The culprits and miscreants are in plain hiding, while we, Sri Lankan-born scientists, have become laughing stock in the South-Asian and the broader Australasian region. An Indian agriculturist, condescendingly and rather cheekily asked me last year ‘Is there any agriculture in Sri Lanka? What a shame on a country with such an agricultural heritage!
In the cauldron of ills adversely affecting society, climate change (CC) adaptation has taken a back seat on the island. If citizens lack knowledge regarding a particular policy issue, if they are unengaged, and if they have high trust in the efficiency of the institutions provisioning a service, there will be very little pressure on those holding power (i.e. politicians) to place the issue on the political agenda. Presently, daily discourses prove that CC adaptation is the least of the concerns of the citizens who do not have much to eat.
Getting back to drinking water — Are we, as a country, prepared for fluctuating water supplies and water quality risks that climate change will bring about? I appeal to the engineers and scientists in the country to forget these corrupt politicians and do what they have to do. Global engagement is a MUST in managing water resources as the risks due to bacterial contaminants (Escherichia coli and other water-borne pathogens) and protozoans (such as Cryptosporidium and Giardia), as well as industrial pollutants, including metals and metalloids.
One cannot ignore the possibility of fertilizers and pesticides also in this category of contaminants, which can end up in waterways as a result of overuse and misuse. However, concentration is the critical issue as to how much people are exposed to via various pathways, including drinking. The threat of such chemicals to well-treated, drinking water supplies is almost always negligible or non-existent, based on globally-accepted drinking water guidelines.
Standard practices of securing ‘safe’ drinking water include chlorination, ozonation, and other forms of disinfection. These are in place for water treatment on the island, reducing the risks posed by drinking water. Reverse Osmosis (RO), a high-input technology,, has also been deployed, albeit on a limited scale, in areas that appear to have high levels of fluoride and other ions that are implicated in the Chronic Kidney Disease of Unknown Aetiology (CKDu). However, as a country, Sri Lanka is way behind other developing countries in many areas of analytical capabilities and instrumentation. Without the capability to rapidly analyse water samples for any or all of these analytes, ‘safe’ drinking water supplies cannot be secured.
The island is also way behind other developing countries in integrating solar energy to drive the RO plants deployed or any other new technologies. We would do well to update the existing plans for disasters increasingly driven by CC. This planning should include how to access and deliver safe drinking water and food to a large populace who might be affected by an unusual climate event. Other countries and even major cities are already well-advanced in this planning because people, both scientists and society, have been more engaged.
CC-related risks identified by the International Panel for Climate Change (IPCC) include the prospect of increased extreme weather events, both regarding frequency and severity, floods, cyclones, droughts, heat waves, extreme cold and wildfires. All have the potential, in various ways, to negatively impact water supplies and water treatment processes.
All over the world, the existing guidelines and regulations regarding the management of drinking water quality concerning extreme weather events are judged to be insufficient. Extreme weather events can have negative impacts not only on water quality but also on the availability of drinking water, calling for strategies for adaptation and mitigation to reduce vulnerability.
Better planning and more investments in maintenance (including those RO plants in CKDu-affected villages) are therefore needed. Such planning requires a dialogue between local scientists, government departments and civil society, supported by selected experts on different subject areas. It is crucial for society, in various ways, to engage with the issue. Waiting for the government to tell us what to do is not an option in preparing for potential CC effects.
The next government — if there is going to be a change in 2024, has its work cut out to plan with the relevant public servants how to adapt and mitigate climate change effects. They must wake up from their current apathy, overcome political interference, hope for a better future and plan to ensure the most critical day-to-day requirements for existence, including drinking water and energy supplies. Without those, the future will be far worse than the economic pressure and conditions in which the greater majority of people are currently suffering.
