Social media platforms are flooded with photos, memes, and posts of the recent floods in Kandy, especially at the Kandy Railway Station, which came as a surprise to many. While these floods have grabbed the attention of the authorities, the people question how Kandy got flooded.

In addition to heavy rainfall, floods could be caused by siltation, the overflowing of water bodies,

inadequate or blocked drainage systems, various construction-related work in flood plains, etc.

However, it is also important to discuss the manner in which Sri Lanka’s climate has changed.

The recent events should not be limited to a few Facebook posts, disaster management

programmes, and the cleaning up of debris. In a context where Kandy is not an area that

experiences floods as often and as intensely as other areas, they should also be taken as a warning sign.Climate change is a serious issue that has emerged as a major threat to the entire world, and Sri Lanka too has paid attention to the matter. However, in Sri Lanka's discourse on climate change, most attention appears to have been paid to dealing with climate change as an individual issue. In other words, a large number of indirect ways of dealing with climate change and also various aspects of people's lives that are indirectly impacted by climate change are receiving less attention than they require.

Formulating policies and development plans based on climate change-related concerns is one such area to which Sri Lanka is yet to pay adequate attention. In a backdrop in which facing climate change-related challenges is a threat that all countries, especially islands such as Sri Lanka with access to limited land resources have to deal with sooner or later, it is crucial that the country has policies that enable it to reduce the impacts of climate change, and that these policies are incorporated into other policies and plans whenever possible.

Among other matters, development plans and policies should prioritise climate change-related policies. This is important due to two reasons. Firstly, the authorities should understand how sustainable and climate-friendly the existing development policies or plans are; and secondly, climate change has a direct impact on the country’s overall resources’ management situation because Sri Lanka has limited resources. Development plans and policies take a special place in this discussion because Sri Lanka is seeing a surge in development projects that have the potential to contribute to adverse climatic changes and they are becoming normalised and there is a lack of development plans and policies that allocate adequate space for the country’s response to climate change.

The political and public authorities have a great deal of responsibilities in this regard, all of which begin with the accurate understanding of their role in Sri Lanka’s response to climate change. They bear the responsibility of focussing on the sustainability and eco-friendliness of development plans and policies, and also the duty of identifying existing activities that have the potential to pose a threat to such changes. At the same time, there needs to be a discourse at the decision-making level to determine how each institution or policy could tackle climate change through policymaking and by incorporating climate change-related concerns in other policies.

The flooding of Kandy should be considered a lesson, and that lesson should be put into

practice without any further delay to prevent any further damage to property and risk to lives.