NDB launches ‘Leaders for Sustainability’ on Earth Day

As a responsible corporate citizen, NDB partnered the Field Ornithology Group of Sri Lanka to implement a sustainability awareness programme for schools islandwide.

This project under the theme ‘Leaders for Sustainability’ aims to nurture and promote students to act as ‘Sustainability Leaders’, promoting the conservation of our environment and acting as ‘Changeagents’ of society.

The programme focuses on biodiversity and birds. Sri Lanka is blessed with a high biological diversity which has also been a major source of food, medicine and a resource for many utilitarian products. Development has had a detrimental impact on our biodiversity and the need for conservation and sustainable use of our biodiversity has become an urgent need. Interestingly, the study of birds has contributed immensely for the identification of suitable indicator species for predicting and monitoring environment changes. The project includes a three-day field visit to the ‘Sinharaja World heritage Center’ where the students are educated and have to undertake a series of activities including field work to understand the biodiversity, birds and the environment. The project was launched in commemoration of Earth Day with the first batch of 20 students and five teachers from Kelaniya Gurukula MV.

Earth Day is an event celebrated worldwide each year on April 22nd to demonstrate support for protection of the environment. Earth Day brings attention to a large number of issues in requirement of attention, such as pollution of the ocean, debris left over on land, climate change, conservation of the Earth’s ecosystems, energy conservation, soil corruption, corrosion, overpopulation, nuclear issues, the depletion of the ozone layer, the depletion of the Earth’s natural resources, the introduction of wastes and toxicants into the wilderness and the seas, nanotechnology, and the deforestation of rain forests.