Colombo, Sri Lanka, 5 July 2021: The Decade of Action for the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) demands the mobilization of everyone everywhere, grounded on a level of ambition that supercharges ideas into concrete, bold and implementable solutions. Thus, we need to renew our determination to enact a multilateral response that gears green recovery efforts through multi-stakeholder partnerships.

Noting the importance of mainstreaming and contributing to the policy discourse on green development in Sri Lanka, the Ministry of Power and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in Sri Lanka, together with interested stakeholders, will convene the Colombo Development Dialogue series on Green Development.

This is convened following UNDP’s Global Human Development Report, which was launched earlier this year, titled “The Next Frontier: Human Development and the Anthropocene”; which argued that a great transformation is needed to survive in the next stage of human progress.  

Thus, this series of policy dialogues aim to contribute to shape the national green development agenda and support the establishment of a national multi-stakeholder platform to promote and support ongoing initiatives on green development. Importantly, the platform will identify intersections between the proposed policy dialogue series and its contribution to the work of the Presidential Task Force on Creating a Green Sri Lanka with Sustainable Solutions to Climate Change.

To this end, the First Task Team Meeting of the Colombo Development Dialogue on Green Development took place on 30^th June 2021, chaired by Hon. Min. Dullas Alahapperuma, Minister of Power and Ms. Wasantha Perera, Secretary to the Ministry of Power, together with Ms. Faiza Effendi, Officer in Charge, UNDP in Sri Lanka. Government representatives from relevant ministries and departments such as the Ministry of Energy, Ministry of Environment, Ministry of Health, Ministry of Transport, Ministry of Agriculture, Ministry of Fisheries, Minister of Plantation, Sustainable Development Council, and the Department of National Planning, were also present at the meeting. Alongside them were representatives from development partners including the Asian Development Bank, World Bank, International Finance Corporation, Delegation of the European Union to Sri Lanka and the Maldives, and the British High Commission Colombo. Key private sector stakeholders were also present at the virtual meeting with representatives from the Ceylon Chamber of Commerce, Biodiversity Sri Lanka and the UN Global Compact Network Sri Lanka.

The Colombo Development Dialogues is UNDP Sri Lanka’s flagship policy engagement platform and the proposed Series on Green Development is expected to kick-start in August 2021.

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