Flash floods and earth slips with man’s footprints
View(s):Climate change risks
While disasters of this magnitude are not frequent, flash floods and landslides have become recurring events. Reports confirm that such hazards now occur almost every year, especially during the two monsoon seasons, with dozens of significant incidents recorded annually.
Sri Lanka’s disaster profile has shifted from occasional floods and droughts to frequent, multi-hazard crises. Historical data shows the post-1990 period as a turning point, with climate change amplifying risks and economic losses. Without stronger adaptation and resilience measures, the scale and cost of disasters will continue to escalate.
Sri Lanka devastated by floods, landslides.
Global warming and biodiversity loss explain part of this crisis, but the deeper question is whether Sri Lanka itself has contributed to its own disasters. This is a concern that has gained increasing attention in recent decades, as the nation confronts the consequences of its choices.
Pamphlet poems
During the week, much of our conversation centred on the extreme weather and its devastation across the country. In one such discussion, Emeritus Prof. Rev. Wijithapure Wimalaratana remarked that about 50–60 years ago it was rare to hear of people dying in floods or being buried alive in landslides.
He made an interesting observation: “If such incidents occurred, they even became the subject of ‘pamphlet poems’ sold at Sunday fairs.”
Older generations in Sri Lanka will recall these pamphlet poems or booklets. Folk poets would compose verses describing extraordinary real-life tragedies, stirring public curiosity. Vendors would sing a few lines aloud in crowded places, narrate part of the story, and sell the pamphlets for about 10 cents each.
Over time, this poetic culture disappeared. What was once considered extraordinary has now become tragically common, leaving little that surprises or inspires such cultural expression today.
Passing Kadugannawa
Every time I drove to Kandy along the Kadugannawa stretch of the A1 Highway, a fearful thought crossed my mind: at any moment, a rock could fall or the earth could slip from above. This section of the Colombo–Kandy Road is a fragile landscape, flanked by steep cliffs on either side.
Yet over the years, permanent and temporary constructions have multiplied, and businesses have flourished along the roadside — from stalls serving coconut roti with fiery chili sambol or mushroom curry, to vendors selling fruits and sweets, and even carwash services using high-pressure water drawn from the mountain. Some of my wiser friends never stopped there, avoiding the risk of leisure or shopping in such a hazardous setting.
My caution deepened after reading a journal article titled “Assessment in Landslide-Prone Terrain within a Complex Geological Setting at Kadugannawa, Sri Lanka: Implications for Highway Maintenance”, published in Geotechnics (June 2024) by S.M. Pitawala, H. Wimalakeerthi, and Risk Heinze.
Their research confirmed the high risk of loosening rocks and earth above the highway and offered recommendations to reduce the impact on traffic flow. Seventeen months later, the warnings proved true when falling rocks and landslides struck Kadugannawa, turning fear into reality.
Man-made disasters
Many believe that the increasingly devastating environmental damage in Sri Lanka — frequent flash floods and landslides — is largely a “man-made disaster.” While such damage has global dimensions related to climate change, my focus here is on what we as Sri Lankans have contributed over the past 75 years.
Sri Lanka’s population has tripled during this period, now reaching 22 million. This rapid growth raises serious questions about how we manage land, resources, and the environment, and how these choices have led to human catastrophe.
Unlike developed countries, where populations have concentrated in urban areas, Sri Lanka’s population growth has spread thinly across the island. The Census data in 2024 also confirms that more than three-fourths of the population still live in rural areas.
Despite low productivity and poor returns, the rural agricultural sector continues to employ one-fourth of the workforce, making it a major source of poverty and vulnerability. The other side of the coin is the lack of industrialisation and service sector development which would have otherwise absorbed excess labour from the rural agriculture.
Encroachment by national scale
As Sri Lanka’s population has grown, people have spread into wildlife areas, leading to human–wildlife conflicts. Over the past 75 years, forest cover has declined by about 20 per cent, causing the loss of habitats, biodiversity, carbon storage, and increasing vulnerability to climate-related disasters.
Encroachment has extended into state reservations — forests, parks, tanks, highways, railways, rivers, and the coastal belt. Modern land reservations were first institutionalised by the colonial government under British legal and administrative frameworks.
A few decades ago, anyone who built on reserved land was denied access to basic services such as water, electricity, telephone lines, and even a formal address. Over time, however, political patronage and public sector corruption eroded these restrictions. Over the past few decades, squatters have received full services and facilities from government agencies, undermining the rule of law.
Unsustainable land use patterns
Sri Lanka needs not only the enforcement of the rule of law, but also clear guidance from physical planning to shape land use — including road networks, urban areas, rural villages, residential zones, industries, wildlife habitats, and economic corridors. The Department of Physical Planning should have been recognised as the central authority for this task.
Although the National Town and Country Planning Ordinance was passed in 1947, the first national plan was only drafted in 2007, six decades later. An improved version was launched in 2019. Yet this too was sidelined when both the people and political leaders rejected the US$480 million Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) grant in the same year.
The National Physical Planning Policy (2019) designated nearly two-thirds of the island as “conservation space” and identified the central highlands and coastal belt as “environmentally sensitive regions.” The real question is whether these policies have truly respected the country’s fragile landscape — a failure that threatens both national survival and future progress.
Far behind regional standards
Finally, let me cite the editorial of the Daily Sun newspaper in Bangladesh on December 3, 2025, titled “Sri Lanka’s Disaster Preparedness: A System Still Far behind Regional Standards.” The editorial observes that although Sri Lanka has a disaster management framework in place, its performance has consistently lagged behind countries such as Bangladesh, India, the Philippines, and Japan, where disaster preparedness is treated as a national priority.
Notably, the impending Ditwah cyclone was forecast by international weather agencies as early as November 5, 2025, yet these warnings were largely disregarded — a reflection of the chronic neglect and institutional inertia that has characterised Sri Lanka’s disaster response for decades.
Both history and historical incidents teach plenty of lessons, but Sri Lanka’s disaster record is best described as a national failure. Human footprints across time — from deforestation to unplanned settlement — ignored the reality that this is an island with a sensitive landscape.
These choices explain much of the vulnerability to natural disasters. Yet equally damaging has been the chronic unpreparedness: despite repeated warnings, institutions failed to anticipate and mitigate hazards, turning predictable events into national catastrophes.
Sri Lanka must embed disaster risk reduction into all development planning by treating its fragile landscape as a national priority. Strengthening early warning systems, enforcing land-use regulations, and investing in resilient infrastructure will reduce vulnerability and prevent recurring hazards from escalating into national failures.
(The writer is Emeritus Professor at the University of Colombo and Executive Director of the Centre for Poverty Analysis (CEPA) and can be reached at sirimal@econ.cmb.ac.lk and follow on Twitter @SirimalAshoka).
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