Nairobi (Kenya), 22
February 2011 - The United Nations Environment
Programme (UNEP) today announced that India,
with one of the fastest growing economies
in the world that is embracing the process
of a transition to a Green Economy, will
be for the first time ever the global host
of World Environment Day 2011 (WED) on 5
June.
This year's theme 'Forests:
Nature at Your Service' underscores the
intrinsic link between quality of life and
the health of forests and forest ecosystems.
The WED theme also supports this year's
UN International Year of Forests.
India is a country of
1.2 billion people who continue to put pressure
on forests especially in densely populated
areas where people are cultivating on marginal
lands and where overgrazing is contributing
to desertification.
But the Indian Government
has also found solutions. While the socio-economic
pressures on the country's forests are tremendous,
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,
and home to one of India's most iconic wildlife
species: the tiger.
India 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 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. 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 5 June 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.
The WED 2011 website
will inspire, inform and involve people
through unprecedented interactivity, offering
daily tips, information and statistics on
forest conservation, a platform where people
around the world can register their activities,
social networking campaigns and competitions
to get people on every continent involved.
See: www.unep.org\WED. Anyone can organize
an event and register it on the WED website,
and each of these individual actions when
taken collectively will go a long way to
securing important forests services for
generations to come.
For more information please contact:
Notes to Editors:
About World Environment
Day (WED):
Last year's global host, Rwanda - a country
of exceptional biodiversity that has made
huge strides on environmental protection
- led the celebrations with three days of
keynote events. Thousands of activities
were also organized worldwide from Hong
Kong to Abidjan, with beach clean-ups, concerts,
exhibits, film festivals, community events
and much more.
2011 has been declared
by the United Nations as the International
Year of
Forests. And World Environment
Day this year will reinforce this global
concern
with the official tagline
- Forests: Nature at Your Service.
Forests cover one third
of the earth's land mass, performing vital
functions and services around the world
which make our planet alive with possibilities.
In fact, 1.6 billion people depend on forests
for their livelihoods. They play a key role
in our battle against climate change, releasing
oxygen into the atmosphere while storing
carbon dioxide.
Forests feed our rivers
and are essential to supplying the water
for nearly 50% of our largest cities. They
create and maintain soil fertility and they
help to regulate the often devastating impact
of storms, floods and fires.
Splendid and inspiring,
forests are the most biologically diverse
ecosystems on land, and are home to more
than half of the terrestrial species of
animals, plants and insects.
Forests also provide
shelter, jobs, security and cultural relevance
for forest-dependent populations. They are
the green lungs of the earth, vital to the
survival of people everywhere - all seven
billion of us.
Forests embody so much
of what is good and strong in our lives.
Yet despite all of these priceless ecological,
economic, social and health benefits, we
are destroying the very forests we need
to live and breathe.
Global deforestation
continues at an alarming rate - every year
13 million hectares of forest are destroyed.
That's equal to the size of Portugal.
Short-term investments
for immediate gains (i.e. logging) compound
these losses. People who depend on forests
for their livelihoods are struggling to
survive. Many precious species face extinction.
Biodiversity is being obliterated. What's
more, economists around the world have proven
that by not integrating the values of forests
into their budgets, countries and businesses
are paying a high price. One that ultimately
impoverishes us all as harm to our forest
life-support system continues each and every
single day.
But this trend is not
irreversible. It's not too late to transform
life as we know it into a greener future
where forests are at the heart of our sustainable
development and green economies.
Conserving forests and
expanding them need to be recognized as
a business opportunity. When we add it up,
an investment of US$30 billion fighting
deforestation and degradation could provide
a return of US$2.5 trillion in new products
and services.
Furthermore, targeted
investments in forestry could generate up
to 10 million new jobs around the world.
Already, many leaders are glimpsing the
potential for renewable energy and nature-based
assets, but for transformation to happen,
forests need to become a universal political
priority.
The services forests provide are essential
to every aspect of our quality of life and
individual action can result in exponential
impact, so do your part!
