Calling ONE and ALL to be a part of an annual event that is aimed at being the biggest, most widely celebrated global day for positive environmental action. Come 5th June and thousands of people from countries all over the world will be celebrating World Environment Day (WED) this year.
Hosted every year by different cities with different themes what began in 1972 has today grown to become one of the main vehicles through which the UN stimulates worldwide awareness of the environment and encourages political attention and action.
It is through WED, that the UN Environment Programme is able to personalize environmental issues and enable everyone to realize not only their responsibility, but also their power to become agents for change in support of sustainable and equitable development.
This year the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) announced that India will be the global host of World Environment Day 2011 with the theme being ’Forests: Nature at Your Service’
India is a country of 1.2 billion people where pressure is continuously put on forests especially in densely populated areas where people cultivate on marginal lands and overgrazing is contributing to desertification. Realizing the socio-economic pressures on the country’s forests, India has instituted a tree-planting system to combat land-degradation and desertification, including windbreaks and shelterbelts to protect agricultural land.
In conserving its critical ecosystem, India has successfully introduced projects that track the health of the nation’s plants, animals, water and other natural resources, including the Sunderbans – the largest deltaic mangrove forest in the world, home to one of India’s most iconic wildlife species: the tiger.
The country has also launched a compensation afforestation programme under which any diversion of public forests for non-forestry purposes is compensated through afforestation in degraded or non-forested land. The funds received as compensation are used to improve forest management, protection of forests and of watershed areas. Moreover, a government authority has been created specifically to administer this programme.
Achim Steiner, UN Under-Secretary General and UNEP Executive Director, said, “Over close to the 40-year history of WED, India’s cities and communities have been among the most active with a myriad of events undertaken across the country each and every year – so it is only fitting that this rapidly developing economy is the host in 2011.”
“India is famous for its culture, arts, movies and world-beating Information Technology industries. Increasingly, it is at the forefront of some of the ‘green shoots’ of a Green Economy that are emerging across the globe,” he said.
“From its manufacturing of solar and wind turbines to its Rural Employment Guarantee Act, which underwrites paid work for millions of households via investments in areas ranging from water conservation to sustainable land management, foundations are being laid towards a fundamental and far reaching new development path,” added Mr. Steiner.
This is underlined by India’s introduction of the Clean Energy Fund into its national budget which provides subsidies for green technology and has been the basis for a National Action Plan on Climate Change (NAPCC) which sets specific targets on issues such as energy efficiency and sustaining the Himalayan eco-system.
India is currently planning one of the largest green energy projects in the world that will generate 20,000 megawatts of solar energy and 3,000 megawatts from wind farms on 50,000 acres in Karnataka in southwest India. The first phase of the US $ 50 billion project will start next year.
In its ground-breaking report on the Green Economy launched yesterday, UNEP cites India and the US $ 8 billion National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, which underwrites at least 100 days of paid work, benefiting close to 60 million rural households.
“India’s offer to host WED is another expression of India’s strong commitment to work with the global community for sustainable development. This event will serve as the inauguration of a series of events leading up to the hosting of the 11th Conference of Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD). It will also flag off the celebrations of the International Decade for Biodiversity. This will in addition signal India’s commitment to the biomass economy so dependent on the sustainability of our natural resources,” said Dr. T. Chatterjee, Secretary for Environment and Forests of the Government of India.
Two of India’s most prominent cities - Mumbai and Delhi - will be the venue for this year’s global celebration of the environment, with a myriad of activities over several days to inspire Indians and people around the world to take action for the environment.
The celebrations in India on June 5th are part of thousands of events taking place around the globe. WED 2011 will emphasize how individual actions can have an exponential impact, with a variety of activities ranging from school tree-planting drives to community clean-ups, car-free days, photo competitions on forests, bird-watching trips, city park clean-up initiatives, exhibits, green petitions, nationwide green campaigns and much more.
This year UNEP plans to make WED 2011 into a bigger celebration than ever before, building on the unprecedented success of WED 2010 – when people in more than 112 countries registered activities on the WED website and WED was thrust into the blogo-sphere with the first-ever WED-blogging competition.
An initiative where everyone counts, WED is a day for people from all walks of life, to come together to ensure a cleaner, greener and brighter outlook not just for themselves but also for future generations.
Map showing India’s forest cover
Acknowledgements: http://www.unep.org/wed/news/hostcountry.asp
