04 Mar 2008
- Forget Facebook, MySpace or You Tube:
here comes connect2earth, a new online community
where young people can upload videos, pictures
and comments about the environment.
On www.connect2earth.org,
users and visitors will be able to write,
speak, illustrate and video present their
concerns on subjects important to them,
and share environmental ideas and solutions.
Each month, users will
vote for a winner who will receive a Nokia
mobile phone.
“Connect2earth is a
truly global space for young people to connect,
share, express their concerns and hopes
about the environment online – and win some
prizes in the process”, said James Leape,
Director General of WWF International.
“This new community
allows them to tell the world why they care
about the environment and why it should
be protected.”
Julia Marton-Lefèvre,
Director General of the World Conservation
Union (IUCN) said: “We live on an amazing
planet – we need to protect it. We want
to encourage young people to be involved
in environmental issues and take action.”
A panel of prominent
conservationists will elect an overall winner
who will get the chance to participate in
the IUCN World Conservation Congress in
Barcelona next October.
She or he will have
the opportunity to present some ideas directly
to leaders from around the world.
“Young people feel increasingly
strongly about protecting the environment
because, for them, it represents their future”,
said Kirsi Sormunen, Vice President of Environmental
Affairs at Nokia.
And how do you connect
to earth through connect2earth? The site,
not surprisingly, is particularly suited
to uploading short films, photos and comments
from mobile phones.
Sarah Halls, IUCN Media Relations Officer
Moira O’Brien-Malone, Head of Media Relations,
WWF International
+ More
This time, world should
heed OECD call to action on environment
05 Mar 2008 - Paris: The OECD’s Environment
Outlook to 2030, issued today, was welcomed
by WWF as yet another compelling argument
that the costs of inaction on the environment
will far exceed the costs of action.
The OECD Outlook is
the latest - and at 520 pages one of the
weightiest - in a run of reports from prominent
economic institutions and commissions calling
on governments and international institutions
to face up to the seriousness and immediacy
of global environmental problems.
“When a body such as
the OECD says that on a range of environmental
issues we need to act globally and we need
to act now, then it is clear that as communities,
countries and companies we need to roll
up our collective sleeves and get on with
it,” said WWF International Director General
James Leape.
“It is sobering to think
how much better off we would be today if
the world, the wealthy world in particular,
had heeded OECD's 2001 call to take action
on many of these same issues. We should
not make the same mistake again.”
James Leape said the
OECD outlook should be commended for looking
beyond the urgent challenge of climate change
to other urgent issues of biodiversity loss,
mismanagment of water resources and escalating
health threats. WWF also welcomed OECD’s
call to prioritise action in the key sectors
of energy, transport, agriculture and fisheries.
“The OECD outlook underlines
both the magnitude of the largely self-inflicted
threats we face and the urgency of acting
effectively on them,” said James Leape.
“It is rapidly becoming the case that it
will be as hard to find a sceptical economist
as it is now to find a sceptical scientist."
While generally supporting
market liberalisation, the OECD noted that
in the absence of “sound environmental policy
and institutional frameworks” globalisation
“can amplify market and policy failures
and intensify environmental pressures”.
The OECD repeated its
2001 call for the removal of subsidies to
environmentally harmful activities, with
special mention of subsidies to fossil fuel
use, agricultural production subsidies,
fishing overcapacity subsidies and the subsidy
and underpricing of damaging transport modes.
The OECD also repeated
that environment policy should not be just
a concern of environment ministers, but
has to be elevated into being a priority
of central and economic policy making in
particular.
“There is now no reason
not to act," said James Leape. "The
OECD outlook is emphatic that the policies
and technologies to address urgent environment
issues are available and affordable, that
taking them will increase efficiencies and
reduce costs and that the earlier we take
action, the better the cost-benefit equation
will be.”
