Climate change is already affecting all of us. This happens due to the increase of green house gases in the atmosphere. Fossil fuel burning is a major reason for this. Sri Lanka as an Island country is highly vulnerable to climate change. Recent floods affected over one million people in the North and Eastern Provinces and also in the Western Province in the Capital of the country.

According to the recent analysis made by the Asian Development Bank, flooding, earth slides, and sea level rise in the Western, Eastern and Southern province will have negative impacts on the food security and nature based livelihoods. A survey conducted by the Centre for Environmental Justice in 2009 found that communities engage in agriculture, fishery will be highly affected in future.

According to the CEJ study, it revealed that majority of the public (more than 58%) are still unaware of the concept of global climate change and its possible causes and impacts. Furthermore, most people were confused of seasonal variations in weather and catastrophic climatic variations. Yet, there is no public awareness especially the vulnerable communities are highly unaware about the causes as well as the tool for resilience and adaptation. This let the communities heavily affect during the climate disasters such as flooding. Unlike some other countries, there is no institution/s who delivers the knowledge to vulnerable communities.

We hope this project will identify and mobilize local actions such as flood resilience, drought resilience, river bank protection, identify flood and drought resilient seed varieties etc. It is important to prepare them by sharing with such experience in other places.