Kokova Magazine

What will you be doing on 5th June 2011 to celebrate World Environment Day?

WED is an annual event that is aimed at being the biggest and most widely celebrated global day for positive environmental action.

WED activities take place all year round but climax on 5 June every year, involving everyone from everywhere.

The goal of WED is to raise awareness to the environment and encourage positive action and attention at all levels of society.

Celebrating WED is about the inspirational power of individual actions that collectively become an exponential force for change in support of sustainable development.

WED has been celebrated since 1972, and this recognition has grown to become one of the main vehicles through which the UN stimulates worldwide attention on the environment. WED thematic celebrations have in the past included the ozone layer, climate change, desertification and sustainable development, to mention a few.

This year’s WED theme - Forests: Nature at Your Service - underscores the many essential life sustaining values that forests provide for us as individuals, communities and businesses, as well as the intrinsic link between our quality of life and the health of forest ecosystems.

The new Green Economy, a UNEP-led initiative launched in 2008, goes hand in hand with activities that, in the spirit of World Environment Day, promote sustainable development.

The Green Economy Initiative proposes an alternative and more sustainable way of managing scarce natural resources, and is not just about "business as usual".

The initiative provides a comprehensive and practical working mechanism, through analysis and policy support for investing in green sectors and in "greening" environmental unfriendly sectors.

The green economy can be summarised as an economic environment that achieves low carbon emissions, resource efficiency and at the same time is socially inclusive.

There are literally thousands of ways that we can all do something positive, small or big, for the environment.

This year, UNEP has developed a WED Pack that will assist you in planning and deciding how to celebrate World Environment Day.

So how are you celebrating WED this year?

Join thousands of people from countries all over the world in celebrating WED this year. UNEP are constantly looking for new and creative ways that you could do this.

Whatever you decide, be sure to tell them about it so they can post your activities on their website and make it part of the Wide World of WED map.

Check out the WED Pack for interesting suggestions on what you could do as well as viewing the Around the World Archive, which lists the activities organized in the past years, in more than 112 countries.
www.unep.org/wed