Sustainability and Intersectionality: Review of National Environment Policy of Sri Lanka in the Light of the Charter of the Global Greens

Abstract

A particular document related to environment named, Charter of the Global Greens (CGG) adopted in 2001. The core of the document sets out the principles that bind together Greens from around the world such as ecological wisdom, social justice, participatory democracy, nonviolence, sustainability, and respect for diversity. Basically, this study based this charter. Interestingly, this chatter has not been much exposed for developing countries like Sri Lanka. In the context of Sri Lanka, there can be found policies and some political mandates and that concerned the notion of environment and sustainable development. Among these, the National Environment Policy (NEP) and Strategies in 2003 can be identified as an important policy. The main objective of this comparative study is to analyze the CGG in the context of Sri Lanka with the NEP. The study tried to understand the similarities and differences between these two documents. Although, it is not fully feasible to have a comparison between a global charter and national policy on environment, it has been opened a new space to rethink about the selected national policy. In short, the principles of the CGG emphasized the sociopolitical impact on environment while the NEP largely concerned on the environment. In other words, The NEP can be marked as a policy which is mostly referred to environmentoriented circumstances such as environment protection. The CGG claims the need for fundamental changes in people‘s attitudes, values, and ways of producing and living. Importantly, it proposed to promote a comprehensive concept of sustainability. This wide understanding about the notion of sustainability could create a linkage between environment and society. The NEP is mentioned that, ―such a policy, in its implementation, will pave the way for sustainable development‖. Unlike the NEP, the CGG has been covered important environment factors like ecological wisdom, sustainability, and social factors like social justice, respect for diversity, and political factors like participatory democracy and nonviolence. In this sense, this paper triedto show some of the policy gapsthat can be seen in the NEP. The first part of the CGG is used as a foundation since it has been provided a comprehensive idea and frameow ork on sustainability and sustainable development.