Marking World Tourism Day 2012, Kanchana Wickramasinghe discusses a pioneering new study that attempts to measure the impact on the environment of Sri Lanka’s booming tourist hotel sector.

UNEP (2008) defines the concept of green jobs as encompassing two basic elements.  The first involves, “averting dangerous and potentially unmanageable climate change and protecting the natural environment which supports life on earth.”  The second element focuses on “providing decent work and thus the prospect of well-being and dignity for all in the face of [...]

  Rio +20 Conference is now underway and is being considered a landmark event which takes place 20 years (+20) after the first Earth Summit held in 1992.  The Conference is the second opportunity to revisit the issues of “sustainable development”. It will be based on two major themes – a) ‘green’ economy in the [...]

Last week saw the hosting of the World Oceans Summit in Singapore by The Economist newspaper in association with National Geographic, which brought together over 200 global leaders, including scientists, businesses, and representatives from governments, NGOs, and other key stakeholders to talk about sustainability, economics and the world’s oceans. These issues are very relevant to Sri Lanka, being an island surrounded by one of the world’s largest oceans.

>Environmental Challenges in the Indian Ocean Region By Kanchana Wickramasinghe, Research Officer – IPS The Indian Ocean rim region, home to around one-third of the world’s population, possesses a significant strategic economic value. Nearly half the world’s container traffic and 70% of the total traffic of petroleum products is accounted for by the Indian Ocean. [...]