Nature: Bridging communities and connecting lives

Friday, 24 January 2014 00:51 - - {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}

Panel discussion headed by Udaya Gammanpila, Douglas Devananda, Professor Sarath Kotagama and moderated by Dr. Jehan Perera today. Dilmah Conservation will be hosting a two day event, starting today (24 January) at the Lakshman Kadirgamar Institute of International Relations and Strategic Studies (LKIIRSS). Aptly titled ‘Who Cares about Nature’ the program will feature a series of events highlighting the importance of mainstreaming sustainability, conserving Sri Lanka’s biological wealth, restoring ecosystems, gathering of data, information and facts for the advancement of knowledge, supporting environment and nature education, and empowering indigenous communities.

Saturday, 25 January, will be an open to public full day program from 9 a.m. to 7 p.m. A significant portion of it will be designed to examine the necessity of environmental education and reconciliation through nature at a panel discussion headed by Udaya Gammanpila, Douglas Devananda, Professor Sarath Kotagama and moderated by Dr. Jehan Perera. Scheduled to be held between 3 and 5 p.m. at the LKIIRSS auditorium, the symposium themed ‘Reconciliation through the Power of Nature’ will be a special highlight of the event. Professor Kotagama is a firm believer of nature’s healing qualities and its potential for peaceful interaction and reconciliation. “We believe nature is therapeutic and it provides the necessary background for any type of reconciliation. Because, from years of studying nature, my experiences very clearly indicate that once we go into nature we forget all our differences,” he states.

The subject matter of the discussion will also reflect on the work carried out by Dilmah Conservation to reconcile the North and South towards a singular Sri Lankan identity. The project concentrated on educating the children from the North, East and other provinces on the natural wealth of Sri Lanka through nature appreciation workshops and field visits, the rebuilding of Jaffna’s famed Thondaimannaru Field Research Station and the publication of the first Tamil language book on birds. The distinguished panel will further examine the curative properties of nature and the use of the natural world to reconcile communities who have been scarred by a three-decade-long war.