Sowing the seeds for 'Eternal Earth'

By Nilma Dole

Embarking on a journey to Hunas Falls provokes much honeymooning interest but from now onwards the beautiful hills of Hunasgiriya will be known for 'green' peace of mind. Jetwing has made their Corporate Socially Responsible initiative, the Jetwing 'Eternal Earth' project, a continuous on-going project that will allow everyone from children to visitors to plant a tree and help reduce global warming that is the 'hot' topic today.

On the 7th of January around 250 trees were planted on a four and a half acre plot in the Hunas Falls Hotel vicinity by schoolchildren in the presence of diginitaries, officials and stakeholders. Nearly 100 acres of land will be utilised to practise this analog forestation technique which will become the life-blood of this project.

The aim of the Jetwing project is to gather their naturalists and representatives from each of their hotels to foster two schools where a few students will be selected. These students will come yearly to the site to plant a tree and also maintain the ones that were planted the year before.

Students are chosen from Grade 6 to Grade 12 from schools in areas like Elkaduwa, Nuwara Eliya, Negombo and so on. Acording to the goal of this 'Eternal Earth' project, educating the children will go a long way to help them understand and practise good environment behaviour.

In addition to this, an 'Earth Centre' knowledge base at the hotel will help children understand about the wonders of the Mother Nature of Sri Lanka, especially with regard to the endemic species. Students will be given free plants to grow in their homes and schools and when they maintain their nurseries, Jetwing will offer to buy their mature plants, giving them some revenue for their livelihood.

The launch of an official website www.eternalearth.net will also assist the visitors to help plant a tree and track their tree through special labels. This makes the relationship of your tree friendship more personalised. Photographs of the site are all uploaded onto the website as well.

Hiran Cooray, Deputy CEO of Jetwing "On behalf of the environment, we have made business decisions and I believe that we have strong economical sense". Further on, he noted, "In the area of climate change, little Sri Lanka can make a big change".

Environment Minister, Champaka Ranawaka stated, "We have even put the Environmental Conservation Levy (ECL) to ensure the public do their role in saving the environment". Udaya Gammanpila CEO of Central Environment Authority mentioned, "We must act now before it's too late to save our environment". He enlightened that humans are part of nature and without nature we can't sustain ourselves, so we must be saving our environment now.

Tourist Board Chairman, Renton De Alwis highlighted that they have have realised the need for a 'Tourism Earth Lung' community ensuring that the prevalent projects, Trees for Life with the Responsible Tourism Partnership and the Rainforest Rescue mission with Rotary Club are as successful as this Jetwing one.

Tikiri Kobbekaduwa, Governer of the Central Province emphasised the fact that even though they give property to people who are in climate changing areas, these people head back again because they can't colonise or will have complains. "More often than not, they are likely to have two properties," the Governer noted. He said that those people should realise that global warming is happening and to be intelligent enough to relocate to another place.

Former Provincial Council Member for Matale, Sanjeewa Kaviratne also aired his views that we must protect our endemic species and the nature for our future generations.

Patron of 'Eternal Earth' and renowned actress Iranganie Serasinghe commented, "Don't think that by being one person in the whole world, that you can't do anything about it". She advised everyone to plant a tree or have potted plants around the house. Most importantly, she noted the bad Sri Lankan habit of picking and tearing and plucking leaves from a plant. This is a terrible practice and she advised everyone to stop picking leaves and think before you destroy the Mother Nature.

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