Director General Dr. Sulakshana Jayawardena emphasizes anchoring sustainability in verifiable practice, not observance alone

The Board of Investment of Sri Lanka (BOI) marked Environment Day with an awareness and action programme held at the BOI auditorium, where Director General Dr. Sulakshana Jayawardena called on BOI staff to treat environmental protection as a daily discipline rather than a once-a-year observance.

Addressing officials, Dr. Jayawardena said environmental and production challenges could not be resolved overnight, and that lasting progress depended on sustained, incremental effort. He noted that the protection of land and the environment is a responsibility that must be exercised every day, not treated as a task to be revisited only periodically.

The Director General stated that, as the apex organization responsible for attracting foreign direct investment while safeguarding the country's sustainability standards, the BOI has a particular duty to ensure that the enterprises it approves operate with credible, evidence-based environmental and production practices. He pointed to Good Manufacturing Practices and sustainable supply chain management as areas where BOI enterprises must demonstrate improvement through verifiable evidence, rather than assurance alone.

Dr. Jayawardena also spoke of the need to work in harmony with the natural environment, observing that the wider ecosystem offers its own lessons in resilience and adaptation. He noted that Sri Lanka has the administrative resources to support these efforts and encouraged officials to make full use of the tools and authority available to them to drive meaningful change on the ground.

The Director General's remarks were followed by a discussion on the way forward, with the BOI reaffirming its commitment to strengthening quality production processes backed by solid evidence in Good Manufacturing Practices, reinforcing the role of the Department of Environment in implementation, promoting sustainable land use across its enterprise network, and integrating traditional knowledge into current environmental and production strategies.

The event forms part of the BOI's ongoing efforts to embed sustainability into its investment promotion mandate, ensuring that growth in foreign direct investment is matched by responsible environmental stewardship across the enterprises it supports.