Tea, rubber, coconut, and spices are Sri Lanka’s agricultural gifts to the world, but rice sustains its people. And growing rice needs plenty of water, a resource that is diminishing in the face of climate change.
Through the Water and Climate Resilience programme, GWP had been working with the Sri Lankan government at national level to develop country-wide policies and strategies to better prepare the country for warmer and dryer weather. This high-level activity, however, was not visible to farmers working in the country’s fields, and to the government’s agricultural extension officers who were advising them. And the expert climate and water knowledge of university researchers was available only in the technical language of scholarly publications.
Strengthening focal person in farmer’s language
Recognising this knowledge gap, in 2015 GWP Sri Lanka engaged three universities in a survey to understand farmers’ information needs and the ability of academic researchers to meet them. The survey found that farmers, familiar over the years with normal cycles of drought and heavy rainfall, did not understand that this pattern had been interrupted, and that the future would be different. There was an urgent need for farmers to diversify their crops, and to adopt climate-resilient practices. Plain-language instruction was clearly needed, as was a trained cadre of extension officers.
For GWP Sri Lanka, the study sparked a response: training-of-trainer workshops were organised for mid-level management staff of major agencies. This led to training of more than 2,500 officials – 20 percent of them women. Training materials were produced in Tamil and Sinhala languages – useful in a country with a 90 percent literacy rate – and a 1,000-page technical manual was summarized in 80 pages for local use. Understanding that the main source of information for many farmers was the news media, GWP Sri Lanka organised special training for journalists to familiarise them with the basic science of climate change.
These activities stimulated several ministries and universities to work together to host their own training courses, and the Department of Agriculture established a unit in its Extension Division dedicated to climate change adaptation.
“Climate change is complicated, so you have to carry people along to build their understanding. But now the knowledge has become self-generating – part of the norm”, explained Ranjith Ratnayke of GWP Sri Lanka.
Catalysing field-level implementation of Sri Lanka’s national strategies has both improved farming techniques and led to new networks and collaboration across government and academia.