Stakeholders’ meeting to implement Green Entrepreneurship program

 From left: CIFOR-ICRAF Senior Scientist Dr. Rupesh Bhomia, Senior Advisor to the President on Climate Change Ruwan Wijewardene, and iLEAD International Academy Managing Director Ravi Pratap Singh

Stakeholders at the meeting

Senior Advisor to the President on Climate Change Ruwan Wijewardene

Ruwan Wijewardene, Senior Advisor to the President on Climate Change, with a vision of developing a large number of country’s youth to be the Green Entrepreneurs for mangrove development and restoration, called a meeting of all the stakeholders early last week to further concretise the idea and develop a road map for action. He introduced the subject by emphasising that he would like to see development and environmental conservation go hand-in-hand, without being in conflict with each other.

iLEAD International Academy in Sri Lanka Managing Director Ravi Pratap Singh made a detailed presentation on the concept, design of the program and a proposed way-forward. During the presentation, he highlighted the importance of involving youth at the community level, developing them as entrepreneurs and building a cadre of youth at community-level in the vicinity of mangroves to develop and restore the mangroves of the country. He expressed confidence in mobilising more than 6,500 such youth along the entire coastline of Sri Lanka on the basis of similar work done by the iLEAD program, under which they have worked with more than 12,500 youth in Sri Lanka and around 2.5 lakh youth across South Asia.

The stakeholders who participated in the meeting, called by the Senior Advisor to the President, appreciated the idea and endorsed its potential to facilitate sustainable restoration and growth of mangroves in the country. Dr. Rupesh Kumar Bhomia, a Colombo based Senior Scientist of the Centre for International Forestry Research and World Agroforestry (CIFOR-ICRAF) said that they would be able to bring in the learnings from across the globe to ensure success of the proposed mangrove restoration and development program in Sri Lanka. He appreciated the idea of bringing the local community at the centre of action, backed up by appropriate scientific knowledge. The National Task Force on Mangroves Chair Prof. Sevwandi Jayakody applauded the concept, however cautioned to follow a scientific approach and take support of related Government agencies to design customised solutions. Environmental Policy and Planning Additional Secretary Padma Abeykoon gave advice to include local wisdom available at the community level to incorporate effective conservation practices relevant to a particular location. 

The plan includes development of entrepreneurship around mangrove and other ecosystem services-based products. This would promote coexistence of various economic development activities and mangrove (environmental) protection, restoration and growth. The proposed initiative would have entrepreneurship in the areas of zero-emission-based water- and land-transport system in and around mangroves, use of bio-mimicry based product innovations such as ECOncrete, production and use of M-Sand (manufactured sand) to avoid sand mining from the rivers of the country, and designing shrimp farming that coexists with mangroves.

Dan De Silva, representing Chamber of Young Lankan Entrepreneurs (COYLE) informed that the Chamber has initiated an entrepreneurship development centre, which would be available to provide support to these initiatives. The members of COYLE, he said, see their role in this initiative as part of their contribution to the nation-building process. 

Apart from Additional Secretaries to the President D.L.U. Peiris and M.F.A. Mubarak, and Assistant Secretary to the President Dewmini Silva, the meeting was attended by Coast Conservation and Coastal Resources Management Director General Ranawaka, Department of Wildlife Director-Protected Area Management Amararathna, Department of Forest Conservation Conservator Wasantha, Marine Environment Protection Authority Manager Piyadasa, and Aide et Action International Senior Program Manager Kapila Dhanapala. 

This meeting will be followed by a Big Lunch, bringing together around 100 stakeholders from the Government, scientific community, Corporates, UN Agencies, Foreign Missions, INGOs and other Aid Agencies, and most importantly those who are practicing climate action at the community level. A selected few from outside Sri Lanka would also join. The Big Lunch is an event to generate more action ideas that would support Green Entrepreneurship for Mangroves. These ideas would soon be synthesised in a follow up multi-stakeholder workshop (Speaking Common Language), convened by CIFOR-ICRAF to develop a detailed action plan, and move forward.