Sri Lanka Comprehensive Disaster Management Programme (SLCDMP) 2014-2018.

The goal of the new Sri Lanka Comprehensive Disaster Management Programme (SLCDMP) is to ensure the safety of Sri Lanka by reducing potential disaster risks and impacts on people, property and the economy. The overarching objective is to create and facilitate the enabling environment for a multi-hazard, multi-sector, multi-agency partnership oriented disaster management programme, using risk knowledge as the base, in line with global conventions and frameworks. Specific objectives are to, 1. Build capacity at institutional and individual levels; 2. Integrate disaster risk information based approaches in the development agenda; 3. Prevent/mitigate the impacts of frequently occurring disasters on life and properties; 4. Improve coordination of stakeholder groups (public, private, NGOs and others); 5. Enhance response capacity at all levels; 6. Adopt an integrated monitoring and evaluation and a reporting system; and 7. Efficient knowledge management in disaster risk reduction.
In the recent past Sri Lanka has made much progress in poverty alleviation and meeting Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). Investments in DRR in the country’s economic development context must be seen as an investment towards ensuring the resilience of the achieved development and not as an additional expenditure. It is important that SLCDMP explicitly works towards realizing the development co-benefits of disaster reduction as opposed to being focused entirely on reduction of losses. This will also be in line with the global development discourse on resilience, where the focus is on transformative development as opposed to maintaining minimum capacities to cope with shocks. SLCDMP can provide the base for agencies to come together onto a single platform that in turn can be used to mainstream long-felt gender needs and needs of persons with disabilities. It may also then be possible on this platform to collect the required level of data and monitor the effectiveness of the implementation, and to take corrective action.
Community based disaster risk management cuts across all aspects of the disaster management cycle. Also, the CBDRM provides opportunities to integrate ecosystem based approaches, climate change, gender, and disability concerns at the community level to promote disaster mitigation.