Across the country, climate change related weather aberrations and extreme weather events are becoming increasingly common. The increased intensity of rainfall, frequency of flood and drought incidence in the last ten years, has caused severe hardship to poor farmers across Sri Lanka impacting mostly on agricultural workers in the Dry Zone. 2015 witnessed a significantly higher incidence of high rainfall resulting in localised floods, especially in the post-war North5, affecting roughly 31,500 people, and landslides in 3 districts, affecting 295 people and leading to 7 deaths In addition, droughts affected 7 out of 25 districts and roughly 258,000 people.
Within selected cascades the Project will target households meeting the vulnerability criteria (one or more) for specific investments on climate smart agriculture, rainwater harvesting, community water supply programmes and flood early warning dvisories, including: