Sri Lanka goes green with an urban focus

Work on a major project that aims to promote environmental protection in Sri Lanka is likely to begin within days, and it is a timely initiative that will encourage sustainable urban living in the country, observers say.

Michael Edesess, an adjunct associate professor in the division of environment and sustainability, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, said the Model Urban Green Zones project makes sense for Sri Lanka because undertaking such projects later will become more difficult as the country "gets bigger and more heavily populated, more industrialized and urbanized and more polluted".

One advantage in launching the project now is that the country's urbanization rate is still relatively low, with about 20 percent living in cities compared with 36 percent in India, and more than 80 percent in the United States, Edesess said. In addition, Sri Lanka's cities are relatively small, with none having populations of more than 1 million.