Enhancing policy formulations and implementations towards successful climate change mitigation and adaptation in Sri Lanka

Abstract

can be regarded as one of the greatest challenges facing humanity in this century. To date, the impacts of climate change are getting worse day by day, posing an existential threat towards economic developments, human well-being and ecosystem functions. Hence, climate change mitigation and adaptation play a pivotal role in coping with these adverse impacts of climate change in any country. In Sri Lanka as well, the same situation can be observed where different climate change policies and plans are available focusing on climate change mitigation and adaptation to address the prevailing climate change challenges. However, an increased occurrence of potential barriers can be identified during the policy formulation and implementation activities, making them less effective in performance. Hence, the need of further strengthening the climate change policy network within the country has been felt for some time. It is, therefore, this study aimed at contributing towards enhancing the policy formulations and implementations towards climate change mitigation and adaptation in Sri Lanka. Initially, an extensive review of literature on the research area was carried out. Subsequently, the data was collected through in-depth interviews and a document review. The collected data was analysed using code-based content analysis supported by Nvivo software. The empirical findings revealed that Sri Lanka is currently experiencing a number of climate change challenges economically, socially and environmentally. Altogether, 18 economic, social and environmental climate change challenges were captured. Hence, the successful formulation and implementation of climate change policies and plans towards climate change mitigation and adaptation were indispensable. To this, an in-depth exploration was carried out to identify the barriers and their root causes that hinder the successful formulation and implementation of climate change policies and plans in Sri Lanka. Those barriers and their root causes were captured under six (06) main categories as economic, institutional, informational, technological, social and other barriers. Institutional level challenges were captured as the topmost challenges to be addressed within the current context. Accordingly, 18 barriers were explored with their root causes and thereby the necessity of overcoming them was highlighted to make the climate change policy making and implementation activities stronger. In consequence, different strategies were proposed through the empirical findings in order to overcome the identified barriers. At the same time, a critical exploration of climate change policies and plans available within the country was carried out to gain a broader understanding of the current climate change policy network in Sri Lanka. Thereafter, the identified barriers were related to the reviewed policies and plans to see how these barriers can occur when implementing the existing ones, revising them and formulating new policies and plans based on the existing ones. The study provides a far-reaching understanding for the industry practitioners to contribute to enhancing the climate change policy formulation and implementation activities in Sri Lanka by integrating different knowledge bases derived through the findings.