Abstract:
Sri Lanka is an agricultural economy base country. Ancient people protected the
environment since their economy (farming activities) was totally depended on the
healthy environment. Therefore, people themselves voluntarily contributed to protect the
physical environment of the country. However, this situation was adversely affected by
the commercialization of agriculture activities, basically tea, rubber and coconut
plantations introduced after the colonialisation. In addition, increasing trend of population
and the continuing effort to improve their living have created a tremendous pressure on
the natural environment of the country. Therefore, relazing this adverse impact, even
the colonial government imposed various acts/ordinances in order to protect physical
environment of the country. However, provisions of these acts were not enough to
control declining trend of the physical environmental of the country. Later on, this
situation was further accelerated with the liberalization of economic activities in late
1970s. Then, the major challenge faced by the country was the imperative of
harmonizing economic and social development with environmental management.
Government and public concern on conservations of natural resources and physical
environmental issues have been dramatically increased during the last few years. As a
result, the government has taken various steps to minimize such environmental
pollution, which resulted mainly from industrial activities. Meanwhile, some leading
business organizations have voluntarily introduced their own environmental
management polices to achieve sustainable development through the protection of the
physical environment of the country.
The study is designed to assess the environmental management practices and
contribution of leading business organizations as a lesson to other entrepreneurs. This
study is based on two leading business entities in the country and it is found that both
those entities have introduced excellent environmental practices. If other entities follow
such type of environmental management practices it will be easy to overcome
environmental problems in future.
