On Saturday, February 13th, an Environmental Awareness Campaign titled ‘Save the Wetlands’ was held in the Thalangama neighbourhood. This campaign worked to raise awareness on the destruction of the wetlands in Sri Lanka, and the potential further destruction due to a proposed highway construction project through the protected area. Sri Lanka has the world’s only internationally accredited Ramsar Wetland Capital City, and already 40% of the country’s wetlands have been destroyed. With the wetlands being a critical life source for all, keeping our air clean, ensuring carbon absorption, flood prevention and more, they are a vital environment which should stay gazetted. This campaign gained a lot of momentum in our OSC community, many of whom live in the area, who all came together to support such an important cause.

In addition to the community living in the area and the OSC crowd, environmental activists and leaders from environmental groups island wide were present. It was covered extensively by the media, with numerous articles written on it, magazine pages, TV show segments, interviews, live streams and more. All in all it was able to reach a large platform and gain publicity and support. It was gratifying to see such an important campaign gain this momentum, and all the environmental activists in our community played a massive role. We look forward to the next steps and the change that such a project will inspire.

TV Channels live streamed the entire event, with an interview of myself being circulated on Facebook to raise awareness on the concern via social media. I was able to meet environmental activists from around the country, with whom I am currently in contact with, as we were able to exchange contacts. This included environmentalists from groups such as XRebellion, Parrot Fish initiatives, groups from Ratnapura and more.

This initiative also gained momentum via a series of newspaper sources which were published, such as articles in the Daily Mirror, Economist Daily  and more (as seen above).

  

Following the campaign itself, I wanted to continue to raise awareness within the communities close to me, by drawing attention to the efforts within the school community. This happened in two ways. Firstly, I wrote a blurb on the events and the actual protest itself for the newsletter, which is a platform for the whole school. As such, my description of the event itself was shared with parents, teachers, staff and students, and the blurb, along with a series of descriptive pictures was published in our school newsletter; The Gecko Times. Secondly, I created a video describing the entire process, which was shared with students as a part of the introduction to our schools Service Programs, particularly those pertaining to environmental impacts. I created this on IMovie using a series of pictures, infographics, screenshots of newsletters, images of the environmental protection signage around the lake and more. I then created a voice over, speaking about the initiative itself, and uploaded this onto YouTube so that it could be shared amongst students and parents. The link to the video is attached below:

This connects to the following LO’s (Learning Outcomes)

LO5: Demonstrate the skills and recognise the benefits of working collaboratively.

This is because in order to execute this campaign successfully it required immense collaboration, not only with people in the neighbourhood but all those who supported and joined, as well as other environmental groups, tv channels, environmental officers, PHI’s and more. The strength of the campaign was in the collaboration and in the numbers present.

LO6: Demonstrate engagement with issues of global importance.

The destruction of the environment is a global concern which affects us all in all areas of our lives. Fighting for the environment is that of global significance, to contribute to movements working to help us sustainably develop, rather than destroy our homes.

LO7: Recognise and consider the ethics of choices and actions.

This campaign touched on an ethical dilemma that comes with the urbanisation our my neighbourhood, as it calls into question the balance between developing rapidly, and sustainably. Fighting for this demonstrated a clear ethical standpoint to save the wetlands, and also required an understanding of the ethics of hosting a campaign. By ensuring the presence of health inspectors and environmental officers, it was clear that the choices prior to the campaign were thoroughly evaluated to make sure it was a fair and ethical campaign.