Sri Lanka climate crisis food insecurity beyond political headlines

Sri Lanka’s food crisis doesn’t always look dramatic. There aren’t mass queues or a single moment where everything breaks. Instead, it shows up quietly. Less protein on the plate. Fewer vegetables. Families stretching rice just a little further and hoping the next harvest works out.

Climate change sits at the centre of this shift. Sri Lanka produces under 0.1% of global emissions, yet loses more than USD$300 million a year to climate-driven disasters. Around 750,000 people are affected annually by floods, landslides, and storms. Nearly 19 million now live in areas considered environmentally vulnerable. These numbers translate into daily choices about food.

In Dry Zone districts like Anuradhapura and Monaragala, households once relied on paddy farming to protect themselves from price shocks. Erratic rainfall has broken that system. Failed harvests mean families are now fully exposed to markets. When food prices spike, there’s no buffer left.

Dr. Kelegama, a political geographer at the University of Oxford, explains that climate stress hasn’t just reduced yields. It has reshaped survival. Hunger arrives slowly. Protein goes first. Then vegetables and fruit. Rice is protected for as long as possible.

When staple food inflation passed 90% in 2022, many families were already exhausted. Climate shocks had done the damage long before the economic crisis made headlines.

Cyclone Ditwah in November 2025 made this painfully clear. The storm flooded nearly 20% of the country and destroyed around 273,000 acres of paddy during the main cultivating season. One event erased years of fragile coping. For households already carrying debt, recovery was impossible.

This vulnerability is rooted in policy. For decades, agriculture pushed farmers toward input-heavy monocropping, financed through informal credit. When crops failed, debt exploded. Insurance barely existed. Climate variability turned economic pressure into long-term distress.

Infrastructure failures deepened the crisis. Reservoirs overflowed. Two-thirds of railway lines shut down. Rural communities were cut off from markets when they needed them most. Small farmers bore the losses.

Access to irrigation became a line between survival and collapse. Farmers linked to major schemes held on. Rain-fed households did not. In the central highlands, plantation communities, especially Malaiyaha Tamils, suffered heavily as landslides hit deforested slopes. With little land and full dependence on markets, food insecurity hit hard.

As Dr. Kelegama points out, development in Sri Lanka has often distributed risk rather than reduced it. Environmental damage, uneven warning systems, and unequal rescue capacity all showed during Cyclone Ditwah.

Communities are not passive. In Mannar, residents protested wind power projects that disrupted fishing and worsened flooding. After months of resistance, the government agreed that new projects would require local consent. It wasn’t rejection of renewable energy. It was rejection of being ignored.

Geopolitics complicates everything. Over 40% of government spending goes to debt servicing. Climate adaptation competes with creditor demands. After Cyclone Ditwah, Sri Lanka turned to India, China, and the IMF. Relief came, but structural problems remained.

Climate-driven food insecurity doesn’t hit evenly. Estate workers, women-headed households, and informal urban workers absorb the shock first. Poverty has declined since 2022, but remains far above pre-crisis levels.

What gets missed in most discussions is that this isn’t just a climate problem or a food problem. It’s a governance problem. Decisions about irrigation, land use, debt, and infrastructure determine who absorbs risk when the weather turns. Right now, those risks fall hardest on people with the least voice.

Small farmers still save seeds and diversify crops where they can. Families lean on neighbours, temples, and informal networks to get through bad months. These strategies keep people alive, but they can’t carry the weight forever. Without policies that back local food systems, protect small producers, and treat climate shocks as central to economic planning, households will keep slipping further behind.

As Dr. Kelegama argues, food security under climate stress isn’t just about production. It’s about power. Who decides. Who is protected. And who is left to cope alone.

Further information and opportunities to engage with organisations working in this area are listed below:
https://www.orupaanai.org.uk/how_can_i_help.html
https://cafod.org.uk/about-us/where-we-work/asia/sri-lanka
https://caresrilanka.org.uk/

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