Promoting sustainable consumption, greener products:

Lanka can play key role at APRSCP - Dr. Shun Fung Chiu

Hiran H. Senewiratne

Sri Lanka can play an important role in the Asian Pacific Roundtable for Sustainable Consumption and Production (APRSCP) to stimulate the promotion and implementation of sustainable consumption and the greener products, said President APRSCP Dr Shun Fung Chiu.

“The Asia Pacific region has half of the world’s population and anticipates a very high growth. The region is expected to grow more than 8.6 per cent per annum and this has resulted in the change in social and consumption patterns in the region,” said Chiu at the launch of the ninth APRSCP conference in Colombo.

He said that Sri Lanka being an emerging economy has taken several measures to protect and preserve the environment and promote greener products, which is important to achieve sustainable economic growth

He said that with the increase in consumption patterns in the world, raw materials have become very scarce and the emerging economies especially in the Asia and Pacific region has to take the leadership role to combat these environmental issues.

The roundtable is playing a catalytic role to find environmental and consumption issues in the region to promote cleaner production in the region.

Therefore, it is commendable that Sri Lanka has set up a National Cleaner Production Centre for the purpose, the APRSCP President said.

Minister of Environment and Natural Resources Champika Ranawaka said that the current global crisis was mainly due to the unprecedented consumption of resources, which brought several environmental issues to the world. Therefore, sustainable green energy needs to be promoted.

He said that governments alone couldn’t find solutions for these issues and the APRSCP could play an important role to combat these issues in the region. This type of conferences provides several feedbacks and ideas to promote cleaner environment in the region.

The first APRSCP conference was held in Thailand in 1997 and since then seven Roundtables were held, hosted by countries in the region.

Several national and international experts attend the conference, which provides a forum for presentations and discussions on current global environment concerns and its solutions, he said.