Rwanda, the East African country that is embracing a transition to a Green Economy, will be the global host of World Environment Day 2010, the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) announced on Feb 17, 2010.
World Environment Day (WED), which aims to be the biggest global celebration for positive environmental action, is coordinated by UNEP every year on 5 June.
This year’s theme is ‘Many Species. One Planet. One Future.’ - a message focusing on the central importance to humanity of the globe’s wealth of species and ecosystems. The WED theme also supports this year’s UN International Year of Biodiversity.
Rwanda’s combination of environmental richness, including rare and economically-important species such as the mountain gorilla, allied to newly evolving and pioneering green policies is among the reasons why UNEP welcomed its offer to be the global 2010 host.
While the country faces many challenges ranging from overcoming poverty and developing sustainable energy resources to land degradation, this ‘land of a thousand hills’ is developing forward-looking strategies including the development of renewable energies including hydropower, solar power, biogas and methane gas for power generation.
Rwanda is already internationally-renowned for introducing a ban on plastic bags, nationwide environmental clean-up campaigns and the restoration of previously degraded natural rain forests as part of a chimpanzee conservation programme.
“The pairing of Rwanda with WED in 2010 is thus a compelling and inspiring alliance—underlining that all economies, rich and poor and North and South have real and tangible opportunities to shape a more sustainable development path: One that develops new business models based on intelligent management of the natural world and high tech clean and renewable businesses,”-Achim Steiner, UNEP Executive Director and UN Under-Secretary-General
(For more information, refer to UNEP.org site)
