Climate change has drastically impacted Sri Lanka’s GDP growth
HSBC is committed to tackling one of the challenges of our time, viz the climate change that has impacted the weather patterns in Sri Lanka with heavy rainfall and floods. In 2017 HSBC pledged US$100 billion for sustainable financing projects. HSBC is now looking at providing finance to the apparel sector’s medium and smaller category to reduce the carbon footprint that contributes to global warming, said the CEO of HSBC Sri Lanka and Maldives, Mark G. Prothero at a media briefing held at the HSBC headquarters in Colombo this week.
He said in 2017 the Central Bank (CB) has said that the country’s GDP growth had been affected by 1 per cent and climate change has affected many countries around the world as well.
Sri Lanka Country Representative of International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Dr. Ananda Mallawatantri said agriculture and industrial revolution have contributed to the global warming bringing about catastrophic changes in the world. Therefore the Governments, NGOs and other agencies should work together to prevent the global temperature from rising to prevent sea levels rise etc. He said sustainable development is beyond the balance sheet of many companies that focus on the environment. Governments too should improve the carbon footprint but businesses will not invest unless they see value.
Brandix’s Apparel Ltd, Chief Financial officer-Corporate, Suchira Surendranath said they look at sustainable development under three pillars at Brandix Ltd, especially water in terms of carbon emissions and water usage and affluence discharge of hazardous and non-hazardous waste going into landfills. “We have a five year strategy to minimise environmental degradation.” Eleven per cent of energy consumption in factories is through LED lighting which can save 50-75 per cent of the energy usage that is safe for the environment and that last longer. Referring to the machinery side, he said 44 per cent of usage goes to air conditioning and new instruments can drastically reduce energy consumption of air conditioning. “Our green garment plant at Seeduwa became the world’s first platinum rated factory in 2008. The new factory in Batticoloa has installed 1.6 megawatts of solar panels on the roof that provide energy more than the requirements of the factory,” he said.