The struggle with El Niño-induced dry weather is a warning about the country’s food security, rural economy and economic stability. When water begins to disappear from reservoirs and irrigation tanks in the country’s agricultural heartlands, the consequences extend far beyond households waiting for water bowsers.
According to the latest figures from the National Disaster Relief Services Centre, more than 81,000 people across seven districts are already affected by the dry conditions. The Government’s response, including increasing emergency water allocations from six to 15 litres per person a day, deploying 324 water bowsers and reserving Rs 4.8 billion for disaster relief, is necessary and deserves recognition. The circular issued by the Ministry of Defence on 6 August to facilitate faster water relief interventions is also a welcome example of administrative flexibility.
But these measures address the symptoms, not the underlying problem.
The more serious question is what happens when the same lack of water affects crops.
The affected districts, including Ampara, Polonnaruwa, Batticaloa, Badulla, Monaragala, Hambantota and Ratnapura, include some of the country’s most important agricultural areas. Ampara, in particular, is central to national paddy production. A prolonged shortage of irrigation water there is therefore not simply a local agricultural problem. It can become a national food security crisis.
If farmers cannot cultivate, or if crops fail because reservoirs and irrigation tanks cannot provide sufficient water, domestic food supplies will inevitably come under pressure. Lower harvests can push up food prices, increase dependence on imports and place additional pressure on foreign exchange reserves. Therefore, a food inflation shock would be particularly damaging to the economy.
This is why water policy must be treated as food policy.
We cannot continue responding to every drought with bowsers, emergency allocations and temporary relief. El Niño may intensify periodically, but the vulnerability it exposes is largely structural. The country must prepare for a climate in which rainfall is increasingly difficult to predict and periods of severe dryness can place simultaneous pressure on drinking water, irrigation and ecosystems.
The first priority must be to rebuild the country’s water storage capacity.
Sri Lanka’s ancient tank cascade systems offer an extraordinary foundation for climate adaptation. Designed to capture, store and circulate water across interconnected landscapes, these systems represent centuries of practical knowledge about managing water in a dry tropical environment. Yet siltation, catchment degradation, deforestation and poorly planned development have weakened their capacity.
Systematic rehabilitation of these tanks and their surrounding ecosystems should therefore become a national infrastructure priority. Irrigation networks must also be modernised to reduce water losses through inefficient conveyance. Micro-irrigation, piped systems and better-controlled sluices can make every available drop more productive.
Agricultural policy must change alongside water management.
It makes little sense to encourage water-intensive cultivation without adequately accounting for changing water availability. Farmers should have access to drought-tolerant and short-duration crop varieties, backed by reliable agricultural extension services and climate information. In areas facing recurrent water shortages, greater diversification into crops requiring less water should be encouraged where agronomically and economically viable.
This does not mean abandoning paddy cultivation. It means making cultivation decisions based on the water actually available rather than assuming that historical rainfall patterns will continue indefinitely.
Farmers also need access to modern technology. Soil-moisture monitoring, climate forecasting, efficient irrigation and precision agriculture should no longer be regarded as specialised tools available only to large commercial farms. Public agricultural policy must help make such technologies accessible to small and medium-scale farmers.
There is also a governance problem that must be confronted.
Water management remains fragmented among multiple institutions, creating the potential for duplication, gaps in responsibility and delays during periods of scarcity. The emergency coordination mechanisms now being used should not disappear when the rains return. They should evolve into permanent regional structures capable of coordinating water allocation, public health, agriculture and disaster preparedness.
Sri Lanka should also seriously consider a stronger overarching national mechanism for water resources management, capable of coordinating river basins and balancing competing demands for domestic consumption, agriculture, industry and environmental protection.
Most importantly, public money must be invested with the next drought in mind, not merely the present one.