SRI LANKA: Road Towards COP27, Good City Foundation, Urban Development Authority and MG Group Co-Launched the Gampaha City Climate Sustainability Framework and Adaptation Roadmap
October 2022 — Commissioned by the Minister of Urban Development, Waste Disposal and Community Cleanliness of Sri Lanka, in the collaboration with the MG Group of Companies and the Urban Development Authority of Sri Lanka, the Good City Foundation launched the Gampaha Smart City Working Group in mid 2021, as an extension of public-private collaboration playroom for assessing and analysing the feasibility of implementing smart city development plan in Sri Lanka as planned in the National Development Plan by the national government.
Upon more than a year of constant meetings, a high-level policy and geo-information data analysis have been conducted since March 2022 with a number of research fellows local with MG Group of Companies in Sri Lanka, with the data and policy support by the Urban Development Authority. While the country has faced a period of tremendous socio-economic turmoil in the last few months since the global economic consequences triggered by the Ukraine-Russia conflicts, the research has been well conducted and smoothly completed by September the same year.
As a roadmap towards the upcoming COP27 and as a piece of advice to the national government, the report “Gampaha City Climate Sustainability Framework and Adaptation Roadmap”, has been launched in October to illustrate possible actions to act on climate adaptation goals in Sri Lanka through various means of innovative solutions and public-private collaboration.
Read The Full Climate Sustainability Framework & Adaptation Roadmap: Click Here
Policy Recommendations and technology / non-technology based actionable items were recommended in the order of importance and capacity limitation within the government and private-sector collaboration where local key stakeholders in Sri Lanka could adopt, from financing-driven means such as asset-light investment for old building / old town retrofitting for improving drainage systems to technology-savvy initiative in long-term installation of city-level Internet-of-Things for aggregating city information for digital twin modelling, hence consistently monitoring land-planning, (mix) land use, public facility design And social urban dynamics over public expenditure and income improvement.
The “Gampaha City Climate Sustainability Framework and Adaptation Roadmap” is open for download over the link above and the analysis is open for consumption and feedback with more constructive and feasible recommendations.
In the 2023, a development program “Public Private Partnership by Youth” would be possibly initiated with the support of the Smart City Working Group to devise a professional consulting team in Gampaha City for solutions reassessment and local stakeholder engagement. Interested parties and institutions to collaborate could reach the Working Group at community@goodcityfoundation.org.
About the Gampaha Smart City Working Group:
In the collaboration with the conglomerate MG Group of Companies and Urban Development Authority of Sri Lanka, the first smart city initiative of Sri Lanka “Smart Gampaha City” was launched in the witness of The Honourable Dr. Nalaka Godahewa, Minister of Urban Development, Waste Disposal and Community Cleanliness.
“Smart Gampaha City” aggregates a consortium of policy entrepreneurs, urban planners and sustainable investment-savvy corporate leaders from Urban Development Authority of Sri Lanka and construction conglomerate MG Group of Companies along with the Good City Foundation to deliver an advanced long-term territorial development framework and a set of key strategic development projects that target to renovate the urban form of Gampaha City to the objectives of Environmental Sustainability, Net Zero (Climate Adaptive) and Socially Inclusive Technology Governance.
