The Institute of Policy Studies (IPS) has obtained global Carbon Neutral certification for the hosting of the 6th South Asia Economic Summit in Colombo.

IPS worked in partnership with the Carbon Consulting Company (CCC) to obtain Carbon Neutral certification from The CarbonNeutral Company, UK.

“The first South Asian Economic Summit was hosted in Colombo back in 2008 and comes back to Sri Lanka this year. The summit will be Sri Lanka’s first Carbon neutral event and there will be a strong focus on the idea of sustainable economics.

Climate change is a critical issue for all countries in this region and we are happy that the CCC is partnering with us to bring in a sustainability focus to this important event,” IPS Executive Director, Saman Kelegama said.

The summit, which is set to take place from the September 2 to 4 this year, aims to bring academics and government officials together to discuss socio-economic issues relevant to the South Asian region and a similar format to the annual World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

The conference will also have one session dedicated solely to environmental issues connected with the subject of climate change.

“Hundreds of conferences and seminars with foreign participants are being organized each year in Sri Lanka and MICE tourism is growing. But we often forget the immense impact on the environment these events have – the hotels, the air travel, the domestic transport, conference materials, etc. Organizers need to think harder about how to mitigate the significant carbon footprint these events have,” Summit Chief Coordinator, Anushka Wijesinha said.