Ruwan Wijewardene, Senior Advisor to the President on Climate Change, along with Ravi Pratap Singh of iLEAD International Academy and Santosh Menon, CEO of FCB KL.LK, called upon President Ranil Wickremesinghe to update him on the progress of an ambitious program to develop more than 6,400 Green Entrepreneurs along the entire coastline of the island to restore and develop mangroves in the country.

Recently Sri Lanka has been selected as one of the seven UN World Restoration Flagships for its pioneering efforts to restore and expand the island’s mangrove cover by over 50 percent.  However, there is lot to be done in the last leg of this effort, which is always most challenging.  One of the important aspects in the last leg is to ensure institutional mechanisms starting from the community level to the national level to sustain these efforts.

The vision of Senior Advisor to the President on Climate Change to have development and environmental conservation work side by side and complementing each other has been given a concrete shape through the program called Green Entrepreneurship for Mangroves in Sri Lanka.  The program has been conceptualised and developed by Ravi Pratap Singh, Managing Director of  iLEAD International Academy, who has led successful mobilisation of more than 12,500 youth in Sri Lanka and around 2.5 Lakh youth in the South Asia Region to develop them as successful entrepreneurs. The program envisages galvanisation of all the forces inside and outside the country working towards mangrove restoration and youth empowerment.

Briefing His Excellency President Ranil Wickremesinghe on this occasion, Ravi Pratap Singh informed that the program would use scientific decision-making tools to appropriately define roles of three key stakeholders in this program- those working towards community mobilisation and action, the businesses in Sri Lanka, and the research/academic institutions. He also shared with the President that this program would not just develop 6,400 young Green Entrepreneurs, but also directly support more than 32,000 persons and reach out to 10 million population of the country.  This initiative, Mr. Singh said, would generate a revenue of Rs 7,860 million (US$ 26 million) annually and add to the income of under-developed coastal regions of the country.

Mr. Ruwan Wijewardene informed President Ranil Wickremesinghe about the immediate timeline of this program and revealed about a meeting of around 100 key stakeholders scheduled in the month of June to generate multiple action ideas, followed by a workshop titled Speaking Common Language to be convened by CIFOR-ICRAF to synthesise the action ideas and develop a detailed action plan, involving all the stakeholders and then initiate work at the community level in selected five locations of the country starting from September 2024. He also informed the President about the commitment of Chamber of Young Lankan Entrepreneurs (COYLE) and CIFOR-ICRAF towards this program from the very beginning. Mr. Singh added by saying that Eden Project of the UK and M. S. Swaminathan Research Foundation are also being mobilised to support this program by sharing their learnings and expertise on the subject of mangrove restoration.

During this meeting with the President, Santosh Menon also talked about another project to build resilience of the country in agriculture sector, which he is facilitating.

Photo Caption - iLEAD International Academy Managing Director Ravi Pratap Singh, H.E President Ranil Wickremesinghe, KL.LK CEO Santosh Menon and Senior Advisor to the President on Climate Change Ruwan Wijewardene