An awareness programme on basic weather
& climate information, collection of relevant data and weather forecasting
was conducted today, 21st September at Kurunegala agro-meteorological
station for a group of farmers of “Shakthi” farmer organization in Kumbukwewa
GN division of Kotawehera divisional secretary division in Badulla district.
This is the first of the series of awareness programmes for selected farmer
groups representing 06 districts of Sri Lanka namely Hambantota, Badulla,
Rathnapura, Anuradhapura, Kurunegala and Batticaloa.
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| Farmers listening to the introductory presentations |
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| Onsite demonstration on reading weather data |
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| Equipments available at Kurunegala Agro-meteorological station |
Issuing of a rain gauge to the
farmer organization to establish a community managed rain fall station and
inducting the farmers on collecting rainfall data also took place as a part of
the awareness programme. The plan is to establish another 05 community managed
rain fall stations in the other 05 project locations as well.
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| President of the Shakthi farmer organisation receives the rain gauge issued by the DOM |
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| Demonstration - measuring of rainfall |
The programme has been organized
under the research project “Bridging the Climate Information and Communication
Gaps for Effective Adaptation Decisions: An Integrated Climate Information
Management System (ICIMS) jointly implemented by the Department of Meteorology (DOM),
Institute of Policy Studies (IPS), Janathakshan Gte Ltd and South Asian Network of Development and
Environmental Economics. The key objective of the project is to reduce the
vulnerability of farmers to climate risks and increase their adaptive capacity
to face them. This is to be achieved through enhancing the rational use of
climate information products in order to improve the effectiveness of
adaptation decisions taken by farmers and policymakers/experts in their
respective decision-making spheres.
(Please click the here for more information about the project)
The training programme was quite
successful with the active participation of the farmers and their response and feedback
was impressive. Stating the importance of the research project they certified
their contribution and active participation throughout the project. The
participation of the farmers was awarded with a certificate at the end of the
programme.
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| Farmer group with the officers of DOM, IPS and Janathakshan |
This awareness programme is a one
important step towards achieving the project objective and various other
activities are being implemented and tested in the ground to serve the purpose.
The efforts will be continued through a participatory, inclusive and innovative
approach.
