EDEX ambitious steps to mould ambitious youth

Ramani Kangaraarachchi

Industries such as renewable energy, waste management, and water treatment would worth USD 700 billion globally by 2010.This is equal to the value of the global aerospace industry, Project Chairman EDEX 2009 Kamal Abeysinghe said. He was addressing the gathering at the opening of EDEX 2009 at the BMICH on Friday.

He said that building a carbon free economy offers the chance to create thousands of new Green business opportunities and hundreds of thousands of new Green jobs and he pointed out that a low carbon society will not emerge from business as usual.

It would require new thinking and new technologies, new education and skills, new forms of economic activity and social organization, new forms of consumer behaviour and lifestyles, and creativity and innovation.

Abeysinghe said that living in a planet in peril where the survival of entire mankind is at stake, people cannot be blind to sustainable living any more.

Therefore EDEX has taken up another pioneering and ambitious step to create a green conscious set of youth.

"We will educate, activate and engage our youth on disciplined creation and consumption of natural resources without depleting them as we believe that stakes are high for the society and economy in Going Green," he said.

A "Think Green" Logo was unveiled at the exhibition.

Abeysinghe proposed the government to set up a "National Green Science Centre" mainly to educate and engage the youth in Green skills and volunteered to play a lead role towards it. The benefits of this effort will be immense, he said.