Tuesday Nov 26, 2024
Tuesday Nov 26, 2024
Thursday, 18 July 2013 00:00 - - {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}
Continuing to push the boundaries in reforestation, The Carbon Consulting Company (CCC) recently partnered with Miss Sri Lanka for Miss Earth contestant finalist Monali Dissanayake to conduct an awareness and engagement workshop for children on environment and bio-diversity conservation.
Getting the children to visit the site of the unique Hiniduma Bio Link project, The Carbon Consulting Company team members were able to engage the children in the project with lectures and discussions, culminating with each of them planting several trees on location.
Further extending the ongoing interaction for each child, The Carbon Consulting Company launched a unique geo-tagging system that accurately tracks the position of each plant through its Geographical co-ordinates, and places them accurately on an online map of the area. Photos of the plant and its details can also be accurately uploaded.
“Our focus has always been to create better engagement solutions for our stakeholders,” said The Carbon Consulting Company Chief Operating Officer Sanith de S. Wijeyeratne. “This advanced mapping system is administered by team members specially trained in geographical information systems, who use the latest technology to provide a far more accurate picture of the gradual expansion of the Hiniduma Bio Link Project to our partners and stakeholders. With more corporates and individuals volunteering to join this ground breaking project, we wanted to up the ante by ensuring that we provide as graphically detailed information as current technology would permit.”
The ‘Hiniduma Biolink Project’ is an effort to establish a biodiversity corridor between the two large remnant disturbed rainforest patches – Sinharaja and Kanneliya in Sri Lanka and to conserve buffer zones around the forest edges using the ‘Analog Forestry’ concept.
The primary aim of this project is to reduce the pressure by the local communities in the surrounding areas to the remaining rainforest patches. As a secondary objective, the project aims to enhance the livelihoods of traditional communities living in close proximity to tracts of natural forest where biodiversity is high, but under imminent threat.
Expanding on the launch, Hiniduma Bio Link Project Project Manager Lakmini Senadheera said: “We are happy to partner with Monali Dissanayake, one of the Miss Sri Lanka for Miss Earth Pageant contestants, and we hope that this venture will create greater awareness of the need to become more environmentally conscious in our day to day lives. We at The Carbon Consulting Company are working towards building a better future for our children and we hope that by supporting such individuals as Ms. Dissanayake we can expand our sphere of influence.”
Phase one of the project, which is presently ongoing, has got 15 farmer families within the selected area involved who are farming adjacent to the identified disrupted forest patches. The project works exclusively with home gardens and seeks to enhance the forest canopy mainly through the introduction of native tree species as well as some fruit and medicinal trees already existing in Sri Lanka, thus allowing the farmers associated with the project to derive additional income from their lands.
