Sri Lanka's commercial capital is seeing rapid development in a variety of sectors, that has made it the fastest growing city in South Asia. The Megapolis initiative is a great opportunity for the City, but also poses some very real challenges with regards to sustainability that needs to be addressed immediately.

Colombo is changing so much that the Survey Department recently released a new map for Colombo that includes the biggest investment projects of the City.

Colombo's image of a "Green City" with the Ocean on one boundary, a large tree covered park in its center, wetlands and shrubs at its outskirts and trees lining all its major roads, is now fading away and is becoming a thing of the past, almost to the extent of being non-existent.

It is in this context that the Global Shapers of the Colombo Hub decided to initiate a partnership with the Colombo Municipality Council and Colombo Mayor's Office to execute the "Tree T@g Colombo Project".

This project aims to digitally geo-tag all of Colombo's trees in order to create an updated and comprehensive record, to help authorities implement measures to conserve and protect these trees.

This record will also be used to estimate the trees per capita of the City and the Mayor's office is committed to evaluate the deficiency and take proactive steps to ensure the required number is met in order to achieve the desired air quality and environmental well being for the City and its residents.

The execution will be through volunteers and we are in the process of developing a mobile application for the purpose of geo tagging and recording information of the trees.

This is a very ambitious project launched in 2019 with an estimated completion date of 2022.