Sri Lanka has put in place extensive programs to respond to disasters. While the government and development partners are now increasingly able to forecast disasters and provide immediate assistance to those affected, more can be done to coordinate these efforts and ensure that disaster-affected households are supported until they fully recover, Dr. Idah Pswarayi-Riddihough, World Bank (WB) Country Director for Sri Lanka and the Maldives said.
This is where adaptive social protection can play a role. Adaptive social protection comprises a series of measures to protect the poor and the vulnerable from disasters. These are measures to become more resilient as communities. Adaptive social protection is not just about money it is also about social assistance and services, such as cash transfers, social insurance, like pensions and disability benefits; and active labor market programs. If they are designed and run well, these programs can cushion the blow of unexpected losses such as those brought about by disasters, she told a conference on Adaptive Social Protection in Sri Lanka: Building Resilience to Disasters and Climate Change in Colombo yesterday.
It was a forum to learn, discuss, and envision a future in which no-one needs fear falling into poverty as the result of a disaster. Information systems are playing an increasingly pivotal role worldwide in directing and coordinating governments’ responses to those in need. With support from the World Bank, Sri Lanka is developing a social registry, which is a database containing details on the needs and conditions of citizens. Currently there are 35 programs implemented by 11 ministries, each with its own rules and processes and no coordination, reducing their impact and efficiency. A social registry can help various programs to determine who needs the most help in a systematic and objective way. The social registry can play a key role in responding to disasters too, by helping the government and other agencies to identify who is affected, what their needs are, and what programs they already receive. The Country Director added, Sri Lanka is visited annually by natural disasters. Both 2016 and 2017 saw severe floods and droughts. According to a recent World Bank report launched last week in Colombo, rising temperatures and changing monsoon rainfall patterns from climate change could cost Sri Lanka 7 percent of GDP and depress the living standards of nearly half the country’s population by 2050. “These events have an enormous impact on those who are directly affected, and the impacts are felt indirectly by all of us.” “We estimate that 5.7% of the population is at risk of falling into poverty if a shock reduced their income by 20%. By taking lives, destroying assets and interrupting business activities, disasters are quite capable of adding measurably to the number of poor.”Several country representatives were to share the knowledge on how they have taken on this challenge, using increasingly sophisticated social registry and welfare systems to provide rapid assistance to disaster-affected citizens during the two day conference to be concluded today. “Likewise, Sri Lanka will also be able to lead the way for other countries by sharing its experiences developing and implementing a truly adaptive social protection system in the years to come,” Dr. Pswarayi-Riddihough said.
The event was sponsored by the French Development Agency (Agence Française de Développement) and the Rapid Social Response Trust Fund (financed by the governments of the Russian Federation, Norway, the United Kingdom, Australia and Sweden, and the GFDRR (Global Facility for Disaster Risk Reduction) and hosted by the Department of National Planning.
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