A great leap forward, one step at a time......

An awareness programme on basic weather & climate information, collection of relevant data and weather forecasting was conducted today, 21^st 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.

Farmers listening to the introductory presentations

Onsite demonstration on reading weather data

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.   

President of the Shakthi farmer organisation receives the rain gauge issued by the DOM

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.

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.