Rebuilding Sri Lanka cannot mean repeating what failed

This wasn't an ordinary natural disaster, it was a warning to change course

- By Randhula de Silva

How much more can a country take ?

(Pic courtesy: UNICEF/InceptChange)

THE floods that washed over Sri Lanka were not the fury of nature only even if it is easier to think so.

They were the clash of global climate disruption with local infrastructure incapable of bearing the brunt, governance delayed and systems never designed for the world we now inhabit. It was a joint failure, global, national, institutional.

Cyclone Ditwah converted homes to islands and wiped out familiar landscapes. Over 1.4 million people in all the 25 districts of Sri Lanka lost their homes with hundreds of thousands thrown into makeshift shelters. The storm passed, but its effects will reverberate in our economy, food security and collective psyche even after the water drains away.

A friend recently asked me, “How much more can a country take?”

But the deeper question is: How long will we deny what is already evident?