Sunday was World Environment Day (WED) and this year’s theme is ‘Forests: Nature at your Service’; designed to highlight the vital environmental, economic and social role the world’s forests play.
Organised by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), the international day was supported by host nation India, with people around the doing their bit to show to support yesterday (June 5, 2011).
India was the focus of worldwide celebrations, with major events taking place in New Delhi and Bangalore including a World 10K Race; which saw 25,000 runners pound the pavements of Bangalore in support of the day.
UNEP also released a new report on the day into the state of the world’s forests and their fiscal role entitled; ‘Forests in a Green Economy: A Synthesis’. The report found that investing an additional US$40 billion a year in the forestry sector could halve deforestation rates by 2030, increase rates of tree planting by around 140 per cent by 2050, and catalyze the creation of millions of new jobs.
Backed by the right kinds of enabling policies, such an investment – equivalent to about two-thirds more than what is spent on the sector today – could also sequester or remove an extra 28 per cent of carbon from the atmosphere, thus playing a key role in combating climate change.
Currently the world faces losing approximately 5.2 million hectares of forest a year.
In other parts of the world, WED supporter projects included a clean up expedition to Mount Everest to remove an estimated 9 tonnes of litter around the mountain. In Brazil the ‘MudaRock Project’ – a free music download service – was launched on June 3, 2011. For every song or video downloaded by users, a tree sapling will be planted in a reforestation area in Brazil. The project aims to plant one million native trees within a year. Finally in Belgium, celebrations kicked off with an environment fete at Parc Cinquintenaire in Brussels, featuring activities, stands and a music concert.
More information is available at http://www.unep.org/wed/index.asp
