POVERTY: SRI LANKA: Women "key" to water projects

POLONNARUWA, 27 May 2011 (IRIN) -

 Photo: Amantha Perera/IRIN
Women bear the brunt of collecting water

Women could prove key to the success of Sri Lanka's rural water and sanitation projects, experts and villagers say.
As a five-year project to reduce time spent collecting water and to ensure safe drinking water jointly launched by the Asian Development Bank (ADB) and Sri Lankan government comes to a close, its leaders are reflecting on the lasting benefits of their decision to incorporate women in an unprecedented way.
"Usually women are in the backseat, but in this [project] we were right in front," Indrani Silva, who heads the women's association at Lanka Pokuna village in the north-central Polonnaruwa District, one of five rural areas involved in this US$263 million undertaking, told IRIN.
Projects took place in eastern Batticaloa and Trincomalee, north-central Anuradhapura and Polonnaruwa and southern Hambantota districts.
Upon completion at the end of 2011, an estimated 900,000 people will have benefited, and those involved say it is largely because the project's policies took into account the importance of gaining the trust and involvement of local women.
"[Women] understand the value of safe water. On top of that, they bear the traditional responsibility of collecting water, cleaning and cooking. You need them to be involved for any such project to have a chance," Mookiah Thiruchelvam, ADB's senior project officer overseeing the project, explained.
At the level of initial discussions with potential beneficiaries, 50 percent of participants and at least 25 percent of the government officials from the Water Supply and Drainage Board were women. This is not usual, Silva said.
"Usually these types of big projects will have no major involvement from the community, except for taking part in meetings. Even then the lead role is taken by men. Now this is our project; without the village women, this will not succeed," she said.
Attanayke Mundiyanse Senevirathana, chief sociologist working on improving access to water in the Polonnaruwa District, says the men were primarily farmers and did not have the time to play a big role, let alone collect water.
"It is the women who used to spend hours and walk miles to collect the water," Senevirathana said.
In Talpotha, a village in Polonnaruwa, the women's association is central to managing water distribution from a new pumping station and water-tank.
A member of the association does a monthly round of the 172 new connections, tabulating usage and collecting payment. But during the dry season their role becomes even more important.
"We go around requesting users to limit usage," said Sheila Herath, the chairwoman of the association. "All of them are our members and we can easily convince them."

Economic benefits
ADB's Thiruchelvam feels the next step is to use the time saved on collecting water to increase the income of the beneficiaries.

 Photo: Amantha Perera/IRIN :
A woman draws water from a well in Batticaloa

"The women have regained three hours every day that were spent on collecting water," he said.
Among some rural villages, women's associations have also proven to be effective in promoting new income generation.
A loan from a local women's association has helped Liyaduruge Siriyawathie, 45, to earn an additional Rs10,000 ($100) every month. She uses the time freed from walking kilometres to collect water to draw portraits and other designs that are sold. "For over two decades I did not have time to draw," she said.
Thiruchelvam said future water projects should take advantage of women's roles and, importantly, the freed hours that used to be spent on collecting water. "We don't calculate the productivity [gained]. It is time we started doing that."
Meanwhile, experts believe similar water and sanitation initiatives involving women could prove instrumental in the conflict-affected north, where access to piped water after two decades of war remains problematic.
On average, only three out of 10 people have access to piped water in all the districts that fall within the Vanni, an area encompassing the two districts of Kilinochchi and Mullaithivu and parts of Mannar and Vavuniya districts in the north, according to the National Water Supply Board.
The ADB and the Sri Lankan government are implementing a comparable project, with a high focus on women, in the Vanni and Jaffna valued at $164 million, Thiruchelvam says.
http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?reportID=92833

MALNUTRITION: SRI LANKA: Rice, wheat prices among highest in region

COLOMBO, 6 May 2011 (IRIN)

 Photo: Amantha Perera/IRIN
Rice is a staple component of the Sri Lankan diet

Sri Lankans are experiencing steep increases in two staple food sources, rice and wheat, because of severe floods and global shortages, says the UN.
A World Food Programme (WFP) analysis states that rice and wheat prices increased by 30 and 26 percent respectively on a year ago, making Sri Lanka one of the worst affected by rising food prices in South Asia.
"In Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka, both wheat and rice seasonally adjusted prices have increased the greatest compared to other countries in the region," according to WFP's April edition of Market Monitor, which tracks price trends in staple food prices in vulnerable countries.
The increase in rice prices in Sri Lanka has been directly attributed to two floods in January and February that hit the main rice production areas - the north-central and eastern regions.
According to latest UN assessments, about 720,000 of the annual 2.7 million metric tons from the main Maha harvest season (mid-February to March) were lost.
Kulugammanne Karunathileke, secretary to the Ministry of Agriculture, said total losses could amount to about one million tons.
Rice and wheat, including bread, make up the largest portion of Sri Lanka's food basket. A March household income and expenditure survey by the Department of Census and Statistics shows per capita monthly rice consumption is 9kg and wheat, including bread, is about 1.9kg.

Rice for bread
Wheat prices have increased mostly due to global crop losses and previous governmental price hikes. In May 2010, after a hefty 2.6 million ton bumper rice harvest, the Sri Lankan government introduced a new tax of 10 cents per kilogramme of wheat to ensure rice farmers did not suffer losses.
Priyantha Geethanage, 43, a retail bread seller, said that with the sharp increase in wheat prices, more people had begun to opt for rice.
Overall bread consumption fell about 17 percent in 2010, according to the Census and Statistics Department.

Fallout eased
Even so, the effects of the price rises have been cushioned and could be mitigated. Harvest lost to floods could be alleviated by larger yields from areas outside the flood zones such as the Kurunegala and Anuradhapura districts, said Nimal Dissanayake, director of the Rice Research and Development Institute (RRDI).
"If the next harvest is a good one, suppliers will not be able to hoard buffer stocks," he said.
Susan Razzaz, senior country economist at the World Bank office in Sri Lanka, said despite such setbacks, the country had experienced accelerated economic growth last year and had increased overall spending power.
"Rice is the main staple of the population, including for the poor, but price increases will not cause large reductions in consumption. Instead, people are likely to consume less of other things if they have to," she said. GDP growth in Sri Lanka was 8 percent, with wages up and unemployment down.
However, Geethanage, father-of-three from the rural Galle District, whose income is directly tied to wheat prices, has found it increasingly hard to meet his family's food needs.
"It is very difficult to keep paying for all of this when the prices go up constantly," he said.
http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?reportID=92653

POVERTY: SRI LANKA: Textile sector unaffected by EU subsidy cut

 Photo: Contributor/IRIN
The garment sector is a major component of the Sri Lankan economy

COLOMBO, 28 March 2011 (IRIN) - More than seven months after the European Union (EU) suspended its preferential trade agreement with Sri Lanka in protest over the country’s human rights record, the subsidy cut has had little impact on the sector targeted, according to government officials.
Many of the country’s 250,000 textile workers - who tend to work 12 hours a day, six days a week for a monthly salary of US$150 - had feared they would lose their jobs under the cut. But most are still employed.
"We are still doing good," Nilanthi Perera, 29, a garment worker from Colombo, told IRIN. She supports three younger brothers and is the breadwinner of the family - like many of her colleagues. “Any loss [of jobs] would have destroyed us."
For five years Sri Lanka received a 10 percent tax concession under the EU’s Generalized System of Preferences Plus scheme (GSP), and textiles account for 65 percent of the country’s exports, according to Central Bank data.
But the country failed to prove to the EU its commitment to three international human rights conventions - the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the Convention against Torture and the Convention on the Rights of the Child - said Jehan Perera, director of Colombo-based think-tank the National Peace Council.
“The EU wanted to send an investigation team to the country to see for itself the situation [regarding alleged human rights violations] - but the government refused to let them in,” leading to suspension of the GSP concession.
“The government would have been concerned that permitting the EU investigation team in would set a precedent, and lead to more pressure on the issue of war crimes,” Perera said.
Sri Lanka has been resisting efforts by a UN Secretary-General’s expert panel to conduct an independent investigation into alleged war crimes during the 26-year conflict between the government and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (Tamil Tigers) which ended in May 2009.

Lost leverage?
The National Peace Council advocates a step-by-step process and was against the total removal of GSP concessions, according to Perera.
“The GSP Plus concessions should not have been fully suspended but should have been used for further leverage to push Sri Lanka to adhere to a human rights agenda. Now the EU has lost this leverage,” Perera said.
He said the EU should have set more achievable human rights goals and used the GSP concession issue as leverage. "Threats are more effective than the actual punishments in aid policy," he said.
"The GSP Plus suspensions did not have a negative impact on the Sri Lankan economy, exports and apparel industry," Tissa Vitharana, a senior government minister, said.
In fact, the textiles sector notched up nearly 6.5 percent in exports from 2009 to 2010, according to the Central Bank.
Foreign buyers are continuing to place orders for Sri Lankan garments due to their high quality, and timely and efficient delivery, according to Chamara Hettiarachi, a Colombo-based economist. He said the textile industry had maximized capacity by appropriate use of technology.
http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?reportID=92296

TUBERCULOSIS: CRS Battling Tuberculosis in Asia

“When I first arrived here, I couldn’t walk. I couldn’t stand. I couldn’t eat.” Maria Sabina Tai, a 40-year-old mother of 7 living in East Timor, sits in the yard of a treatment center for people with tuberculosis. Maria had felt sick for two years, but wasn’t sure what the sickness was. “Then a TB volunteer found me,” she says. She went to the center mainly because of her children: “I was worried about my kids.”
The volunteer who found Maria is part of a CRS-supported program run by Klibur Domin, a local organization in this small, impoverished country near Australia. Though East Timor’s population is only one million, over 470 people die from TB each year here; many more are infected. Klibur Domin runs the 50-bed treatment home, where patients stay and receive a course of antibiotics and good food. Klibur Domin also seeks out sick people in their villages, and raises awareness of the disease.
Tuberculosis festers and spreads easily “where people are crowded together in a small space, and where there is poor ventilation,” says CRS’ Michelle Lang-Alli, who is Asia Regional Technical Advisor for Health. Malnourishment and overwork add to the problem.
TB attacks people who are already weak. One vulnerable group are refugees. In southern India, refugees from Sri Lanka live in cramped warehouses where cooking smoke fills the air. There, residents who contract TB pass it on to other family members, including their children.
CRS programs help TB patients recover and prevent TB from spreading. In East Timor, CRS funds health groups that care for TB patients. In Cambodia, CRS partners do home visits, making sure TB patients are taking their medication properly. In southern India, CRS and its diocesan partners are building new houses for Sri Lankan refugees so they can leave their crowded, unhealthy quarters.
In Timor, Catholic sisters play an important role in running rest houses where patients can take medicine and recover. “In the past, families just thought it was a regular disease,” says Sister Carmelita Martines at the TB home she and her fellow Carmelite nuns run in Timor. If people aren’t in a controlled environment like a rest home, they often make mistakes and don’t take the medicine properly.
The sisters follow up when patients are strong enough to leave the rest house but are still taking the antibiotics. “We call them the champions of TB in East Timor,” says Lang-Alli. “They’re very active. They’ll chase patients up if they don’t finish their treatment.”
Throughout Asia, CRS and its partners are helping the poor breathe easy. “I feel happy and grateful when I see patients return home well,” says Sister Carmelita. “You’re like a bridge that God’s love can flow over to reach them.”
http://crs-blog.org/battling-tuberculosis-in-asia/

POVERTY: SRI LANKA: Does cash for work - work?

 Photo: Amantha Perera/IRIN
Destroyed infrastructure in Sri Lanka's north becomes a source of jobs

COLOMBO, 11 March 2011 (IRIN) - As the Sri Lankan government launches a cash-for-work programme in areas hit by recent flooding, following similar schemes in the former conflict areas in the north, experts warn of potential pitfalls of such schemes.
The new programme will be operating in 12 northern and eastern districts devastated by flooding in January and February, which affected more than two million and displaced close to 700,000, according to the government.
Regional government officials have been instructed to employ those affected by flooding to rebuild rural roads, minor irrigation tanks and channels. Participants are to be paid about US$4 daily for up to four days a week.
More than $3 million has been allocated by the Ministry of Economic Development for the scheme, launched in early March.

Model
As residents started returning in late 2009 to areas formerly controlled by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) rebels in the north, the World Bank implemented a $7.5 million cash-for-work programme. Some 28,652 families benefited between December 2009 and July 2010, according to the bank.
The programme is the largest of about a dozen, which typically run for at most a year, that have operated in the north since the 2004 tsunami.
To limit the number of participants, the Bank set wages 15 percent below market rates and allowed one member per returning family to apply.
The work involves hand-dug construction and small-scale irrigation, and repairs to roads, health clinics, community drinking water facilities or schools.
"The cash-for-work programmes have been quite successful, given the lack of economic activity as the war-displaced began to move back... So far the work has been completed satisfactorily," said G.A. Chandrasiri, the Northern Province governor.
No official unemployment figures are available for the province, but some analysts estimate half the population remains unemployed or is not working enough to support their needs; when cash-for-work programmes end, permanent jobs rarely replace them.
The programme was never intended to be a long-term employment solution, stressed the World Bank office in Sri Lanka. "The priority and challenge at the end of the conflict was to create essential community infrastructure, ensure returning IDPs [internally displaced persons] have short-term income-earning opportunities... so that IDPs will resume their normal livelihood activities in agriculture, informal sector activities, etc."
But short-term cash may actually have long-term negative consequences, said local economist and principal researcher with Point Pedro Development Institute in Jaffna province (heart of the former conflict zone), Muttukrishna Sarvananthan.
"It [cash-for-work] may distort labour market wages (i.e. after the CfW [cash-for-work] ends, the beneficiaries could expect similar or higher wages than what they received under CfW), discourage labour mobility [and] self-employment initiatives. Many CfW programmes in Jaffna and Vanni run for a long time with no meaningful work done."
Major repairs are still handled by government agencies with heavy equipment or foreign workers rather than local manual labour, he added.
"I have seen Chinese workers employed in building of cantonment for army personnel stationed in [the northern district of] Kilinochchi. Local unskilled or semi-skilled labour could have been employed for this purpose."
Sarvananthan estimates unemployment to be above 20 percent in the areas controlled by the LTTE until 2009, under-employment to be at least another 30 percent, and that almost half the work force in these areas survived on occasional employment, earning less than $1 per day.
"There are very limited job opportunities available in this area right now," said Manoharan Seenathamby, the World Bank's senior rural research specialist in Sri Lanka.
This could change if the government switched from capital-intensive to labour-intensive construction, suggested Sarvananthan.
"One way to generate meaningful employment in former conflict-affected regions is to employ labour-intensive - or what the ILO [International Labour Organization] calls labour-based - technologies in rehabilitation/reconstruction of infrastructure including roads, houses, public buildings."

Insecurity
Kathiravel Krishna, a 31-year-old father of five from the northern village of Tharmapuram, said temporary work brought cash, but little stability. "Cash for work is available only for a limited time and in certain parts. Not all the people get it and it cannot replace the security of a job."
He survives on the odd day job on farms and doing construction work. Some of the returnees, especially those who live alongside the main highway, have used parts of their UN-funded government cash grants of $220, given to each returnee family, to set up tea shops.
As of end 2010, 76,000 families had registered with the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) to receive these grants, intended to help in building temporary living quarters, for a total of about $7 million.
Krishna said tea-shop owners and other small business vendors near the highway were the most secure financially. "But, for those living [in the] interior, there is no such option and the cash grant is now long gone."
http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?reportID=92164

POVERTY: SRI LANKA: Floods destroy over a third of rice harvest

 Photo: Amantha Perera/IRIN : Food prices have increased after the floods

COLOMBO, 11 February 2011 (IRIN) - Sri Lanka will lose over one million tons from its upcoming paddy harvest due to recent flooding, officials say.
“We expected a yield of around 2.75 million metric tons from the harvest due in March to April,” Kulugammanne Karunathileke, secretary to the Ministry of Agriculture, told IRIN. “After the heavy rains we will only get around 1.75 million.”
Karunathileke, the highest ranking official at the ministry, said the country had expected a bumper crop - until flooding, which began in January, left some paddy fields under water for up to 11 days. The worst-hit areas are in the eastern districts of Ampara, Batticaloa, Polonnaruwa, Trincomalee and the north-central district of Anuradhapura. Together they account for over 1.2m tons of the harvest.
Of the over 700,000 hectares cultivated this season, more than 200,000 have been destroyed, Karunathileke said.
Rice experts warn that yields will probably also be low in areas not directly affected by the flooding.
“The indirect damage is the spread of fungal diseases that will cause the harvest to drop even in areas outside the flood zones,” Nimal Dissanayake, director of the Rice Research and Development Institute (RRDI), said.
Meanwhile, the impact on rice stocks and prices is already being felt, with the UN World Food Programme (WFP) now having to buy supplies at higher prices due to lack of stocks, and flooded mills.
Rice, a staple part of the Sri Lankan diet, is included in rations being delivered to 500,000 flood victims by WFP as immediate assistance.
“We have made a request to the government to import rice for WFP rations,” Devesh Shankhdhar, WFP’s head of procurement in Sri Lanka, said.
WFP has warned that vegetable prices could also rise.

Hoarding
On 10 February the government warned that traders selling rice at above government-determined prices would be prosecuted, and at the same time it released a buffer stock of 25,000 tons onto the market.
Agriculture Ministry Secretary Kulathileke said the government was keen to stop bulk suppliers hoarding rice. “When stocks are low, we have seen that happening. This is something that we will have to keep a keen eye on.”
According to the RRDI, there were around 400,000 tons of 2010 rice stocks in the country.
“If those stocks are made available, we can keep prices in check till June or even July without shortages,” Dissanayake said.
The government is also planning to bring forward the secondary `yala’ harvesting season, which usually falls between March and September.
In recent years the `yala’ harvest has brought in high yields. `Yala’ is cultivated using irrigated water and Dissanayake warned that success would depend heavily on how fast damaged irrigation networks can be repaired.
http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?ReportID=91893

POVERTY: Thousands displaced by more flooding in Sri Lanka

 Photo: Amantha Perera/IRIN: An old woman carries a child during flooding in mid January

COLOMBO, 4 February 2011 (IRIN) - Over 30,000 people have been displaced and more than 300,000 affected by a second wave of flooding in eastern Sri Lanka in less than a month, aid officials say.
“The same districts that were hit the last time - Ampara, Batticaloa, Trincomalee and Polonnaruwa - have been experiencing heavy rains in the past few days,” Pradeep Kodippili, assistant director of the country’s Disaster Management Centre, the main government body overseeing relief efforts, told IRIN on 4 February.
Floods in mid-January displaced over 380,000 and affected over one million at their height, prompting the UN and its partners to launch a US$51 million appeal in support of the government.
Worst affected this time was Batticaloa District, said Tissa Abeyawickrema, head of the Sri Lankan Red Cross Society. “We are already distributing cooked food and rations among 100,000 in the district,” he said. The organization was deploying more personnel and seeking more assistance as the situation looked likely to deteriorate, he added.
http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?Reportid=91828

POVERTY: SRI LANKA: Food security and livelihoods hit in flood-affected east

 Photo: Amantha Perera/IRIN: A farmer holds a destroyed paddy plant

MANAMPITIYA, 24 January 2011 (IRIN) - Food security and livelihoods have been severely hit in Sri Lanka, specialists say, after heavy rains caused widespread flooding and drove hundreds of thousands from their homes, left 43 people dead, and damaged or destroyed close to 30,000 homes.
According to the UN, agricultural production is the main source of livelihood in the affected area and this season's rice harvest has been badly damaged, leading to increased food insecurity.
The World Food Programme (WFP) estimates about 500,000 residents are food-insecure.
In the worst affected districts of Ampara, Batticaloa, and Trincomalee in Eastern Province, heavy rains between 8 and 12 January left more than 101,171 hectares of paddy fields damaged, of which more than 81,000ha suffered moderate to severe damage, initial estimates suggest.
The UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) estimates a loss of about 450,000 tons or US$120 million.
"The potential loss has been calculated to be in the region of 15.5 percent," Calvin Piggott, FAO's senior northern recovery coordinator in Sri Lanka, told IRIN.
The flooding, some of the worst in 100 years, came just two months before fields were to be harvested for the Maha - the principal growing season in the island nation. More than 607,000ha are cultivated during this time, with over one-fifth of that in the four districts hit by the floods.

Fields destroyed
In some towns such as Manampitiya, along the border between Polonnaruwa and Batticaloa districts, hundreds of hectares were affected.
Here, water hyacinth - regarded as the world's worst water weed - was washed into the fields with the flood waters, covering 81ha of paddy land in one stretch, Manhina Banda, the government agriculture officer for the area, said.
"You can't do anything but wait for the weed to die. Taking it out will be a colossal expenditure," he said.
Elsewhere, when the paddy was under water for two to three days, the harvest was either destroyed or will be woefully low.
"The paddy can look fine, but if it was under water for over a day there will be no harvest," farmer Sarath Weerasinghe from Kirimitiya, an interior village in the Polonnaruwa district, explained.
Weerasinghe is typical of many small-time paddy cultivators in Sri Lanka who depend on rice as their primary source of income. He cultivated 1.2ha, spending around $600 per 0.4ha, and hoped to make about $1,000 per 0.4ha from the harvest.
Weerasinghe financed the cultivation from a small loan obtained from a local businessman. He has no insurance and no way of recouping his losses unless he receives direct assistance.

Livestock losses
But rice farmers are not the only ones reeling; other small crops have suffered losses, though estimates have yet to be finalized.
"There will be multiple effects felt right across the country," Seenithamby Manoharan, a senior rural development specialist with the World Bank Sri Lanka office, told IRIN, warning that in addition to the losses suffered by farmers, there were likely to be price rises when the harvest fell short of expectations.
Since the rains began at the end of 2010, the Economic Centre in central Dambulla, the country's main bulk vegetable distribution centre, has recorded price increases of more than 80 percent, the UN said.
Another area of heavy losses is likely to be livestock. In Verugal, a village in the Trincomalee District with 12,000 people, the loss of livestock was over 10,000, Ponnambalam Thanesveran, the divisional secretary for the village, said. So far no figures have been established for the total loss of livestock due to the flooding.
The FAO is conducting a detailed study of the flood damage, Piggott said, with initial assistance likely to begin in the next three weeks targeting the most vulnerable.
The government has held talks with the World Bank on how to assist the famers, but so far there has been no concrete assistance targeting the destroyed crops or livestock. In most areas, local officials were gathering information last week to be sent to government authorities in the capital Colombo.
"Something has to be done fast, some of these people have lost their only means of income," Thanesveran said.
On 20 January, the UN and its partners launched a $51 million appeal to assist more than one million people over the next six months. Of this, $22 million is designated for food security, agriculture and livelihoods.
The appeal is expected to be revised within the next month to reflect needs as the situation changes and assessments are made available.
http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?ReportID=91709

POVERTY: SRI LANKA: Stray cattle threaten livelihoods in north

COLOMBO, 4 January 2011 (IRIN)

 
Photo: Amantha Perera/IRIN " Stray cattle in the north

Returnees to the north of Sri Lanka are struggling to deal with up to 40,000 stray cattle that are damaging their crops, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) says.
"Stray cattle were always involved in damaging cultivations in the past. This time it [the damage] is high, as farmers do not have enough fencing around their lands," Ravi Dissanayake, a national veterinary specialist with the FAO, told IRIN.
About 80 percent of recently resettled households in the northern districts were involved in farming before being displaced, according to the UN.
The animals were left behind when their owners fled fighting between government forces and the now defeated Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), who had been fighting for an independent Tamil homeland for more than two decades.
Despite ongoing efforts by FAO and authorities to round up the animals, vaccinate them and return them to their rightful owners, large numbers continue to roam freely, leaving many farmers unsure what to do.
Much of the damage is caused at night and by large numbers of meandering herds that cannot be chased away easily, farmers complain.
"It's not until the morning that we see the damage," Christine Gurukularajah, 57, who cultivates 45 hectares of paddy and vegetables in Tharmapuram village in Kilinochchi District, told IRIN.

Large herds
According to FAO, free-grazing cattle herds in northern Sri Lanka are nothing new, with normal herds averaging between 20 and 100 animals and sometimes as many as 300.
"It is a highly intensive farming system based on free grazing on abandoned lands and roadsides," Dissanayake said.
To date, the FAO programme to round up the stray herds has delivered about 20,000 animals to their former owners or new ones.
Sixteen corrals (10 in Kilinochchi District and six in Mullaithivu District) and 15 paddocks (10 in Kilinochchi and five in Mullaithivu) have been set up in the two districts. The rounding-up is carried out by 12 farmer organizations.
Animals not claimed or whose owners cannot be traced have been given to female-headed households.
Livestock management and dairy farming are slowly resuming in Kilinochchi where a private company has set up a milk-collecting centre. The FAO estimates that about 1,200 litres of milk are collected daily in the district.
The agency is also providing medical supplies to start a veterinary clinic in the district.
According to the UN, more than 50 percent of residents living in the Northern Province were involved in livestock rearing before the onset of the conflict, which officially ended on 18 May 2010.
http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?ReportID=91517

MALARIA: A Disease Close to Eradication Grows, Aided by Political Tumult in Sri Lanka

Lynsey Addario for The New York Times

By DONALD G. McNEIL Jr.: Published: December 27, 2010
 Malaria cases jumped 25 percent in Sri Lanka from 2009 to 2010, the country’s ministry of health is reporting. And while this year’s total is still small, at 580, the trend is unsettling to experts.
Sri Lanka is a bellwether for the dream of malaria eradication — and Exhibit A for the argument that politics affects the disease more than climate or public health measures do.
The country — the former British colony of Ceylon, famous for tea and cinnamon — is an island, so eradication is possible.
That almost happened once. After independence arrived in 1948, Sri Lanka had an estimated one million annual cases. With DDT and chloroquine, it drove that down to 18 cases by 1963. But spraying was cut back as DDT fell into disfavor, and by 1969, there were more than 500,000 cases.
Simultaneously, the country’s ethnic fabric fell apart. The majority Buddhist Sinhalese passed laws discriminating against the Hindu Tamils, who were favored under the British, leading to 30 years of civil war. The majority was also split for decades between pro-Soviet and pro-Western factions.
Malaria persisted, with cases highest in the north and east, where the Tamil Tiger insurgency was strongest. Nonetheless, by 2005, the country was below 2,000 cases, though experts said they were undercounted in rebel areas.
Last year, the rebellion was crushed, and malariologists hoped the new national reconciliation policy would lead to eradication. As cases ticked up, a ministry official blamed global warming — a weak argument in a wet tropical country. But he also said more clinics would be opened in former rebel areas.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/28/health/28global.html?ref=health

MALNUTRITION: * Presidential Task Force to eradicate malnutrition in Sri Lanka

Dec 6, 2010
Colombo: Sri Lanka Minister of Health Maithripala Sirisena said today in parliament that the government would appoint a presidential task force to eradicate malnutrition from the country.
The Minister expressed these views addressing the budget debate at the committee stage.
The Minister also said that the aim of the task force would be to eradicate malnutrition by 2011.
He pointed out that the Ministries of Education, Agricultural and Environment will join the Ministry of Health to take measures against malnutrition.
The Presidential Task Force that is appointed to eradicate dengue also will be directed to make the people aware of nutrition, the Minister said.
Data from a Demographic and Health Survey (DHS) by Sri Lanka's health ministry have revealed that child malnutrition is more than 50 percent in some areas of the East and North, with the national average at a record 29 percent.
The UNICEF attributes the malnutrition in children of Sri Lanka to a range of factors including disease, inadequate dietary intake, available food, and knowledge and cultural factors that influence the utilization of health services.
http://www.colombopage.com/archive_10C/Dec06_1291651103KA.php

POVERTY: A roof, a tank, and rain

Aisling Irwin and Aditya Ghosh
15 September 2010
All it takes is a roof, a gutter and a tank to lift the poor out of drudgery. But is it that simple, ask Aisling Irwin and Aditya Ghosh?
Mr Wijesinghe, of Meewellawa village, in the dry northwest of Sri Lanka, used to dread his neighbours calling round. A call, by custom, means serving a cup of tea. His well was dry for increasing portions of the year — and every drop had to be fetched from up to 4km away.
That was before last year's installation of a system that collects rain from his roof and diverts it into a tank and a pond. Now, Wijesinghe has drinking water. In addition, water percolating down from the pond has recharged his well and also irrigates a lush new garden rich in fruit and vegetables that he sells. His family has time for other activities.
As for a cup of tea — his door is always open.
Wijesinghe's story is one of thousands repeated across Sri Lanka and in other countries. Lives are lifted from the drudgery of fetching water. Wasted hours are diverted into more productive tasks. And it is all thanks to a simple intervention.
Proponents of rainwater harvesting say it should be massively expanded and may present the poor's best defence against water scarcity induced by climate change. But the world is also scattered with tales of roof catchment failures — and academics who say its potential for ending water insecurity is oversold.
An ancient pedigree
Catching rainwater is an ancient technology which has risen and fallen in popularity over the centuries. Recently, its favour dwindled as groundwater — a generally high-quality, naturally distributed source that offered economies of scale, became popular.
But, over the past decade, rainwater has made a comeback for those having to dig deeper as their water tables sink; or whose groundwater has been infiltrated by fluoride, arsenic or salt.
In Sri Lanka, the great Indian Ocean tsunami of 2004, which contaminated water in coastal areas with bacteria and sea water, accelerated a growing rainwater harvesting movement, according to Tanuja Ariyananda, director of the Lanka Rain Water Harvesting Forum. At the last count, the 20 million-strong population included 35,000 households with domestic rainwater installations.
Not for everyone
Nature gave Sri Lanka an average annual rainfall of an impressive 1,700 mm, although dry areas can go for up to six months without water.
But Sri Lanka's success is not necessarily repeatable everywhere, says Terry Thomas, senior lecturer in the school of engineering at the University of Warwick in the United Kingdom, which has been involved in roof water harvesting projects in several countries.
Thomas, who says he is a "modified enthusiast" for the activity, says there are many unsuitable places.
"If there is a six-month dry season it's pretty uneconomic to do it," he says. Other routes to water security may be preferable — for example, Middle Eastern nations that are energy-rich but have low rainfall are more suited to desalination.
Uganda, in contrast, has two rainy seasons with only six weeks of dry season — perfect for rain collection. South East Asia and parts of the Amazon jungle are similarly well-endowed, he says.

Uganda's short dry season makes it a promising venue for rain water collection
Flickr/JulioGonzalez1
Roof catchments are also, of course, a solution for the desperate wherever they find themselves — those who live on hill tops where fetching water means back-breaking toil; or where the ground is hard to drill; and those living in areas like north-eastern Brazil where, says Thomas, there are "no rivers, no aquifers and modest rainfall".
Storage is expensive
Although roof catchment may sound like a cheap option, it needs guttering and piping and — most expensively — storage.
In Sri Lanka each household installation, which includes a 5,000-litre ferro-cement tank, costs US$300, including skilled labour. But it can be done more cheaply, says Brett Martinson, senior lecturer in environmental engineering and sustainable development at the University of Portsmouth in the United Kingdom. By keeping away from the frills that inventors keep adding, and opting for a more modest, 500 to 1,500 litre collecting pot, costs could be cut to around $50.
That can still be too much for the very poor, at whom many of the schemes are targeted. So roof water catchment schemes have usually been subsidised by non-governmental organisations, foreign donors, or national governments. This has led, say critics, to the culture of dependency that is common to failing development projects.
"All the programmes over the years have pulled it off by having subsidised systems," says Thomas. "No-one will ever shell out for a non-subsidised system — they wait for another to come along."
And this "anarchic, small-scale, diffuse intervention", as Martinson calls it, offers little scope for the economies of scale that help drive prices down with centralised water distribution.
Rainwater needs laws
Yet in Sri Lanka, the expense does not seem to have impeded relatively long-term success. Donors and government subsidies have indeed bought kit over the years but crucially, according to Ariyananda, government support means rainwater harvesting is unlikely to die away should donors withdraw.
Sri Lanka launched a national rainwater harvesting policy in 2005, followed by legislation. In urban areas, for example, new buildings above a certain size must harvest rain from their roofs.
Government drive is pivotal to nationwide success in roof catchment schemes, according to Vessela Monta, executive director of the International Rainwater Harvesting Alliance, in Switzerland.
"For me, a success story is when a country elaborates a law on rainwater harvesting — when it comes into a development plan," says Monta. "This is the most important step."
Popularity with governments appears to be growing.
"When we started (in 2002), only professionals were aware of the value of rainwater harvesting," says Monta. "People considered we were doing something marginal, linked more with traditions than with the future. It has been a very intensive period of change."
Now, interest in rainwater harvesting in general, and roof catchments in particular, has spread, partly because rainwater harvesting systems were included in the list of 'improved water sources' specified by the United Nations Millennium Development Goals in 2000. Countries with policies, and even legislation, include India, Kenya and Uganda.

Fetching water can take several hours a day
Flickr/International Rivers
The importance of government support, says Monta, lies partly in the fact that it leads to strong national organisations that can drive harvesting projects, train villagers in their new systems, and organise skilled maintenance back-up. Encouragingly for the rainwater enthusiasts, surveys in Sri Lanka show that 80 per cent of installations are working well, which Ariyananda attributes to this.
Effects of climate change
Yet, for a simple technology, says Martinson, there's a mighty number of tiny things that can go wrong.
Mosquitoes can breed in lidless tanks; algae will thrive in sunlit water; tanks must be ventilated to achieve the right temperature; Misguided and fastidious tank owners sometimes scrub inside their tanks, clearing out benign bacteria that feed on the dangerous ones — inadvertently raising their risk of disease. At the other end of the system, roofs that are inaccessible for cleaning get dirty.
But these are surmountable problems and most experts seem to think there is an increased role for roof catchment in insulating the poor against the effects of climate change. This is despite the fact that decreased rainfall and longer dry seasons may reduce its effectiveness in many places.
This is because climate change is likely to worsen the other water options too, with decreased groundwater recharge reducing the capacity of wells, and rising sea levels spoiling coastal water sources.
"My gut feeling," says Martinson "is that climate change won't help [make roof catchments more effective]. But it won't help anything else either — it's whether rainwater harvesting is more or less affected [than other water sources]. "
Ariyananda, however, is convinced about the potential of roof catchments.
"It's something we should promote as adaptation for climate change," she says. "They are predicting more rains, with higher intensity, for shorter times — and big problems with water.
"Rainwater harvesting is the only solution".
Thinking outside the tank
Indeed some experts believe that roof water harvesting could be much more ambitious.
Rajendra Singh, an Indian famous for his regeneration of ancient water harvesting technologies in the dry northeast of Rajasthan region, in India, argues that city buildings should all be collecting water.
Singh is calling for Bangalore, Chennai, Hyderabad, Kolkata, Mumbai New Delhi and Pune, all of which are reeling under severe water shortages, to make it compulsory to harvest rainwater from the roofs of buildings.

Water in Chennai, India: couldn't it be siphoned into tanks and aquifers instead?
Flickr\Pandiyan
"This will have two benefits," he says. "The water table in the cities will be recharged which, with overexploitation for half a decade, have diminished.
"The other benefit is even more important: that these cities will have to draw less water from the rivers, lakes and other natural sources which are all located in rural areas, forested lands and away from the city.
"This will help the poor, who are often denied the most vital resource of life in order to supply urban areas."
As an example of potential benefits he cites Bangalore, the information technology hub of the country. It recently developed a master plan for 1279 sq km of its land, predicting that rainwater harvesting could meet a quarter of the city's water demand.
It is now mandatory in cities such as Chennai and Mumbai for all large, new constructions to install rainwater-harvesting facilities. But existing buildings are exempt.
"There are isolated efforts," says Singh, "which can no longer make a perceptible difference.
"The situation is precarious and needs attention at all possible levels."
Aisling Irwin is SciDev.Net's news editor. Aditya Ghosh is an environmental journalist based in India.
http://www.scidev.net/en/agriculture-and-environment/water-security-climate-change/features/a-roof-a-tank-and-rain-1.html