Vision
The vision of SL-JCP is that of a collaborative bridge between the two countries which will provide inspiring and lasting solutions to grand challenges facing humanity and the earth in an era of exponential transformation, overcoming the acute local impacts of these challenges, bringing peace and prosperity to all peoples it engages with by having inclusion and sustainability as its core institutional values.
Mission
In the context of the above vision, SL-JCP’s mission will be to:
- Become an exemplary modality for Japan’s collaboration with emerging economies;
- address grand challenges facing humanity and the earth’s environment which have acute local impacts on human lives, livelihoods and human-nature relationships;
- design solutions to acute development issues confronting either country through the partnership, which when relevant, could also engage with other countries;
- mobilize advances in science and technology and historic accumulation of knowledge, artisanry and creative enterprise in seeking such solutions;
- strengthen, through the aforesaid, the mutual trust, friendship and cultural exchanges between the peoples and governments of the two countries.
The project is SL-JCP’s key modality for realizing the Vision and Mission articulated above. SL-JCP’s activities over the next decade, up to 2030, will focus on the following:
(1) Project Portfolio Development: Creating a portfolio of projects that are implementable, scalable and replicable. Past experience (see History below) and the discourse over this past preparatory year (June 2019 ~ June 2020) indicate the need for a Project Incubator modality. This is the place where project ideas are transformed by project proponents into a working project document with well-defined stakeholders who will own and operate the project. As these defined projects mature, some of them tend to organically integrate with other related or complementary projects. Such projects are called propulsive projects. As such propulsive projects gather around a development opportunity in an integrated manner., they form a thematic cluster. Examples of this can be seen in the details of the projects targeted for implementation over the next three years in the Project Implementation: Phase 1 (2020-2023) section below.
(2) Performance Monitoring: Reviewing the above projects every three years with respect to implementation status and performance monitoring in terms of:
- a. Contributing to the real economy in either country or both countries;
- b. Addressing the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (UNDSD)
- c. Strengthening the Japan-Sri Lanka partnership in a rapidly growing Indo-Pacific region
The first performance evaluation exercise is scheduled for 2023. Monitoring modalities, evaluation criteria, evaluating body details, are yet to be worked out and will be shared on this page as they are decided.
(3) Public Engagement: Organizing Seminars, Conferences and Publications as and when opportunities arise to share the project outcomes of (1) and (2) through broader public engagement. Some engagement has been carried out in the period just prior to SL-JCP’s incorporation to get an idea of public response. These are detailed later under Project Implementation: Phase 1 (2020-2023) below
The Sri Lanka-Japan Collaborative Platform (SL-JCP) traces its roots to two initiatives. The first was a voluntary private initiative started in December 2015 by expatriate Sri Lankans living in Japan and their Japanese colleagues, the Japan-Sri Lanka Innovation Platform (J-SLIP). It gained its credibility largely by contributing to the success of the Science and Technology for Society in Sri Lanka (STS-SL) Conference, held in Sri Lanka in September 2016 by the Ministry of Science, Technology and Research. The second initiative was the establishment in December 2016, of a special sunset modality, the Joint Comprehensive Partnership (JCP) Secretariat, with offices in Tokyo and Colombo, following dialog between the governments of Japan and Sri Lanka to establish a new modality between the two countries’ Prime Minister’s Offices for fast-tracking development initiatives. Senior Advisors to the Prime Ministers of each country had oversight on JCP activities.
Activities of the G-to-G driven JCP Secretariat were organized around five Working Groups (WG) on: 1) Infrastructure and power development, 2) Foreign investment, technology, trade and enterprise, 3) Urban and regional development, 4) STI-led human development and people to people exchange, and 5) Safety and security. The first initiative, J-SLIP, was absorbed into WG 2) above and went on to incubate over 20 projects. Many of these J-SLIP projects have evolved into what is today’s SL-JCP project portfolio. A new development modality, Foreign Technology Investment (FTI), for Japan’s partnership with emerging economies was developed under WG2) and continues as a key element in many of SL-JCP’s current portfolio of projects.
Following the closure of the G-to-G JCP Secretariats in November 2018, since stakeholders had been mobilized in Sri Lanka and Japan and projects were under way, a new mechanism was needed to sustain the incubated projects through to completion and to develop new initiatives. This was the background to establishing SL-JCP, legally incorporated in Japan as a General Purpose Association, in June 2019. Its founding Board of Directors are a mix of those who were associated with J-SLIP since 2015 and new members who will drive the association into the future