By Tahaan Jayewardene Courtesy The Daily Mirror

Colombo, June 5 (Daily Mirror) – Sri Lanka is among a few South Asian countries identified with a temperature level that is considered too hot for people to be able to work safely outdoors for an average of six hours a day, according to a report compiled by the World Bank.

India, Pakistan and Bangladesh are the other three countries in the category.

The World, in its book titled ‘From Risk to Resilience: Helping People and Firms Adapt in South Asia’ says this is expected to rise to eight to nine hours a day by 2050.

South Asia is facing a sharp rise in extreme weather, with nearly 90 percent of the population expected to be exposed to intense heat and more than one in five people at risk of severe flooding by 2030. With public budgets under pressure, much of the adaptation effort will need to come from the private sector. A new World Bank report lays out policy reforms that would help households and firms adapt to increasingly frequent and damaging weather events, according to the World Bank.

Quoting the Notre Dame Global Adaptation Initiative, the World Bank’s latest report, South Asia is the most vulnerable of the emerging market and developing economies (EMDEs).

It has the highest frequency of floods and high temperature events in the last two decades, which is becoming more common.

Since 2015, 67 million people per year, on average, have been affected by natural disasters in South Asia. Although there has been a decline in the number of deaths caused by floods over the past decade, deaths from extreme temperatures have risen, the book says.

The report also highlights a major risk to Agricultural systems from climate change. Climate change poses substantial risks to the region’s farming systems, including rising temperatures, water scarcity, changing rainfall patterns, and extreme weather events such as droughts and floods,” it says.