Sri Lanka has pledged to actively support a proposed international resolution on Sustainable Nitrogen Management at the eighth UN Environment Assembly (UNEA-8) in 2027, Deputy Environment Minister Anton Jayakody said in Kyoto.
Jayakody was representing Sri Lanka at the N2026 International Conference and Nitrogen Policy Dialogue, held in Kyoto, Japan from 2 to 6 November, and spoke at a high-level panel discussion, Daily Mirror reported.
Efficiency, not restriction
The substance of Sri Lanka’s position was that the world is framing the nitrogen problem the wrong way round. Nearly 60 percent of nitrogen fertilisers used in agriculture worldwide, including urea, are lost without ever being absorbed by crops, Jayakody said — washing into water bodies or escaping into the atmosphere, where they contribute to global warming and environmental degradation.
“The priority should not be reducing nitrogen use outright, but minimising the losses of applied nitrogen,” he said.
Countries should instead adopt science-based technologies and better management practices to raise Nitrogen Use Efficiency (NUE), he argued, in a second Daily Mirror filing on the same address.
Drawing on the fertiliser ban
Jayakody grounded that argument in Sri Lanka’s own experience, saying that abruptly restricting or banning chemical fertilisers was not a practical solution — a direct reference to the 2021 import ban whose consequences for yields and farm incomes the country is still working through, and which the World Bank’s chief economist for South Asia has separately called a bad decision.
The conference also recognised Sri Lanka’s prior contributions to international work on the issue, including the Colombo Declaration of 2019 and the Sustainable Nitrogen Management Resolution (UNEA 5/2) adopted at the UN Environment Assembly in 2022. The N2026 dialogue was organised with the involvement of the UN Environment Programme’s Global Partnership on Nutrient Management (GPNM) and the South Asian Nitrogen Hub (SANH).
What happens next
Jayakody said the government would consult relevant ministries and stakeholders before formally adopting Sri Lanka’s National Nitrogen Action Plan and its accompanying roadmap. No date was given for that adoption.
Not reported
Neither filing states whether the National Nitrogen Action Plan has been drafted or is still being written, which ministries are to be consulted, what Sri Lanka’s current national Nitrogen Use Efficiency figure is, or which country is sponsoring the proposed UNEA-8 resolution. No other verified newsroom carried the Kyoto address at the time of writing, so both sources here are Daily Mirror filings — two reports from one newsroom, not independent corroboration.