World Heritage sites participate in Earth Hour

UNESCO will partner with World Wildlife Fund (WWF) for Earth Hour, one of the world's largest and most well-known environmental campaigns in the world. UNESCO has invited World Heritage sites to participate in this initiative by switching off the lights on the night of Earth Hour: Saturday, 31 March 2012, from 8:30 to 9:30pm local time.

UNESCO Director-General Irina Bokova says, "As a leading advocate for the protection and management of the planet's most precious sites, UNESCO is pleased to participate in Earth Hour 2012. This year, as we celebrate the 40th anniversary of the World Heritage Convention, I appeal to all involved with World Heritage sites around the globe to join the Earth Hour initiative and switch off their lights in the evening of 31 March 2012. With this simple gesture, iconic sites and local communities can show their leadership and commitment for a sustainable planet." A video message from Ms Bokova can also be viewed in English or French.

The Earth Hour campaign began in 2007, and has grown each year. In 2011, 1.8 billion people participated in 5251 cities in 135 countries. For more information, consult the website (www.earthhour.org).

Irina Bokova on Climate Change

UNESCO Director General Irina Bokova gave an informative briefing on UNESCO's actions with regard to Climate Change during the Copenhagen meeting earlier this month.

Click here to watch the interview which is in English.

UNESCO and Ecomigration

Source: "Climate Fears Are Driving 'Ecomigration' Across Globe," Shankar Vedantam, The Washington Post, February 23, 2009.

There were about 25 million ecomigrants in the world a little more than a decade ago, said Norman Myers, a respected British environmental researcher at Oxford University. That number is now "a good deal higher," he added. "It's plain that sea-level rise in the wake of climate change will inundate the homelands of huge numbers of people."

In Bangladesh, about 12 million to 17 million people have fled their homes in recent decades because of environmental disasters -- and the low-lying country is likely to experience more intense flooding in the future. In several countries in Africa's Sahel region, bordering the Sahara, about 10 million people have been driven to move by droughts and famines.

In the Philippines, upwards of 4 million people have moved from lowlands to highlands as a result of deforestation. And in an earlier era, about 2.5 million Americans became ecomigrants after droughts and land degradation during the Dust Bowl years of the 1930s.

Editorial comment: UNESCO has a program utilizing its expertise in education, science, culture and communications to help small island developing states meet their development problems. Climate change will be especially devastating for those states, and UNESCO can help them to deal with the challenge. Perhaps especially relevant will be efforts by UNESCO to help ecomigrants from these states to deal with the cultural impact of their forced migration.

That is not to say that the need for UNESCO services to assist other ecomigrants will be less acute or extensive. An ecomigrant fleeing from desertification in the Sahel will not face lesser challenges than one fleeting from inundation of his island home.

History suggests that when a people are forced into wholesale migration, violence often follows. UNESCO's primary mission is to build the defenses of peace in the minds of men, and doing so in the minds of ecomigrants may be especially important in the prevention of war.

John Daly
(The opinions expressed are mine alone, and do not necessarily represent those of Americans for UNESCO.)

The Grand Canyon

Last week I visited Grand Canyon National Park, one of the places chosen by UNESCO as a World Heritage site. We visited the north rim of the canyon rather than the more frequented south rim.


One approaches the north rim, which is quite isolated, passing through the forests and meadows of the Colorado Plateau. As the above photo shows, in October the aspens found among the pine forests turn gold. From the road we saw herds of grazing deer, and even a coyote, as well as cattle grazing in the multiple use national forest adjacent to the national park.



The two images above are taken from the lodge on the north rim. Reconstructed after a fire that destroyed the original building, it is again an imposing and interesting building, which we were told is important in the architectural history of the United States, representing a peak achievement of the arts and crafts movement. Certainly the first view of the Grand Canyon itself from the lobby of the lodge leaves an indelible impression.


Walking along a rim trail one sees great views across the ten mile expanse of the mile deep canyon framed by tall and graceful pines.



A road branches off that to the lodge, traveling for miles along the Colorado Plateau, with viewing points provided on the rim providing views such as those provided above.

Archaeologists have discovered many prehistoric sites within Grand Canyon National Park itself, and even today there are Native American communities above and below the national park on the Colorado River. Indeed the history of the region through the expansion of the United States has fascinated Americans, and the larger region surrounding the Grand Canyon has been the site of many western movies.

UNESCO Catalyzes Networks

UNESCO's budget is tiny when compared to the global governmental expenditures on education, science, culture and communications. Indeed, its total budget is much less than that of my local county for education.

UNESCO exercises no sovereign control over its member states. Each member state continues to exercise full sovereign control over its own people, territory and actions. UNESCO can not tell any state what to do, nor does it have any power to enforce the decisions of its governing bodies on its member states.

How then does it manage to achieve so much worldwide?

Examination of three networks of sites that have been created under UNESCO sponsorship provides one answer. They are:

• The World Heritage network of 851 natural and cultural sites of such importance as to justify the appelation;
• The World Network of 531 Biosphere Reserves which serve to develop and demonstrate landscape management systems and to serve as reservoirs of biodiversity;
  
• The Ramsar Convention network of 1755 wetland sites of international importance, totaling 161 million hectares.

In each case, individual member states nominate sites within their own territory, providing detailed discussions of the proposed sites to be included in the network. In each case, the sponsoring nation retains full sovereignty over the site, but commits to maintaining the site and to participation in the network with its own resources or those which it can generate from other sources.

In each case, UNESCO manages a review process to assure that nominees qualify for inclusion in the network and reviews the status of members of the network to assure that they still qualify. In each case, there is a subset of member states elected by the overall group of member states which is delegated oversight of the network, and a small bureau or secretariat to manage the networking functions.

In each case the member states have decided that the benefits of participation in the network more than justify the costs of participation. Decades of experience indicates that each network really works to promote cooperation among the sites included and to showcase important sites within the member nations to world attention.

The United States has been critically important in the creation of each of these networks, and Americans have provided intellectual leadership over the lifetime of each of them. Indeed, participation in each of these networks has provided a vehicle for cultural diplomacy, enabling the United States to achieve cultural and environmental objectives of its foreign policy in collaboration with other states. Through the collaborating networks these goals have not only been achieved more economically than would otherwise be possible, but indeed the goals might not have been at all possible without the collaboration of other sovereign states.

Finally, the networks provide the community of nations with an assurance of globally coordinated efforts to accomplish programs of global importance that would be beyond the capabilities of any member state alone.

UNESCO, Energy and Climate Change

On Monday, James Connaughton, the head of the White House Council on Environmental Quality, spoke to the members of the U.S. National Commission for UNESCO on the topic of "Energy and Climate Change". He stated that global warming and increased concentration of greenhouse gases are both occurring, and that scientists generally agree that mankind is contributing substantially to the buildup of greenhouse gases, and thus to global warming.

He projected the very desirable economic growth in the developing world, and noted the very major difficulty that if the world is to hold global warming to acceptable levels, the developing countries are going to have to make major changes in technology, since their current energy and agricultural technologies are "heavy" in the sense that they produce a lot of greenhouse gas per unit economic production. Even were the developed countries to achieve huge improvements in emissions, that effort would not be enough; were the improvements in developed nations emissions to be achieved by the transfer of greenhouse-gas intensive production activities to developing countries without the transfer to clean technologies in those developing countries, there would be no net gain for the reduction of global warming.

Mr. Connaughton also emphasized that the current emphasis on global climate change had had the unfortunate side effect of diverting the attention of policy makers from other environmental problems, such as water and air quality (and I would add desertification, loss of tropical forests, pollution, etc.)

Mr. Connaughton stressed that if we are to succeed in limiting climate change (and other environmental problems), the key limitation will be political will in developing nations, since we have adequate technology for the job. He also said that a critical problem was a major lack of understanding of the size and nature of the task before mankind.

In short, there is a major educational challenge for the world, to build the environmental literacy and numeracy needed to generate the political will to solve the problems leading to global warming and environmental deterioration. The effort is urgently needed, and must continue for generations.

Surprisingly, given that the talk was made to the National Commission for UNESCO, Mr. Connaughton did not make the further inference publicly that UNESCO was a logical entity to lead in the educational effort, building that public understanding and support. Obviously, UNESCO is the lead agency within the United Nations system for both education and communications and information. It leads in the natural science programs needed to develop appropriate understanding of the causes and remedies of global warming and other environmental problems, and the social science leadership needed to measure the success in changing knowledge and understanding of environmental problems.

If the White House really believes Mr. Connaughton's presentation, as does the author of this posting, then it should support a serious effort to expand UNESCO's program focusing on the environmental sustainability of economic development.

I spoke briefly with Ambassador Oliver after the talk, and she emphasized that that kind of an initiative would be a very appropriate one for a public-private cooperative approach. Voluntary contributions, both financial and in kind, would be a powerful stimulus to the development of such an effort on the part of UNESCO.

World Conference on Education for Sustainable Development

UNESCO’s Director-General and Assistant Director-General for Education have announced that the "World Conference on Education for Sustainable Development – Moving into the Second Half of the UN Decade” will be held in Bonn, Germany, from 31 March to 2 April 2009.

Some 700 stakeholders from all over the world will attend the conference, which is being organized by UNESCO and the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research, in cooperation with the German Commission for UNESCO.

Registration will begin in November 2008

Major environmental education conference in India

© UNESCO/Dominique Roger

Studying butterflies in France

UNESCO co-sponsored the Fourth International Conference on Environmental Education on 24-28 November in Ahmedabad, India. Some 1500 participants are expected.

Mark Richmond of UNESCO’s Education Sector will deliver a keynote address on behalf of the Director-General on 26 November.

Read the interview with Peter Woods, an expert on education for sustainability, who represents the Australian Government at Ahmedabad and other international environmental forums.

Meeting on underwater cultural heritage

Six years after its adoption by UNESCO in November 2001, the Convention on the Protection of the Underwater Cultural Heritage will be the theme of an information meeting on 23 November at Organization Headquarters. The event will bring together site managers and experts in underwater archaeology from all over the world to review current issues in this emerging discipline.

Read more on the meeting.

UNESCO launches biodiversity project for 4 heritage sites

Read about the initiative in the Hindu News Update (India).

UNESCO has identified four world heritage sites -- Kaziranga and Manas in Assam, Keoladeo in Rajasthan and Nanda Devi in Uttaranchal-- in India as role models to demonstrate conservation management practises for other biodiversity hotspots. The World Heritage Biodiversity Project was launched today by UNESCO for holistic development of these sites. The project is seen as critical to the preservation of globally significant biodiversity.

U.S. Participation in the Decade of Education for Sustainable Development

Read "SUSTAINABILITY: Education for a Sustainable Future" by Debra Rowe in Science magazine, 20 July 2007. I quote:

After the United Nations declared a Decade of Education for Sustainable Development (2005-14), a grassroots effort from higher education developed in the United States in the absence of a federal government response. The National Council for Science and the Environment hosted its annual conference in 2003 on Education for a Sustainable and Secure Future. Out of that meeting, the U.S. Partnership for Education for Sustainable Development was created to catalyze a U.S. response for this decade and beyond. This national network of over 300 organizations has sector teams in Faith, Business, Communities, Higher Education, K-12 schooling, and Youth. The U.S. Partnership convenes mainstream leaders and catalyzes their commitment to educating for a sustainable future. With impetus from multiple sources interested in sustainability, three major efforts emerged in the higher-education sector: the Higher Education Associations Sustainability Consortium (HEASC), the Disciplinary Associations Network for Sustainability (DANS), and the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education (AASHE). (Links added)

The article describes U.S. efforts in support of education for sustainable development in some detail.

Check out the United Nations website for the Decade.

Check out UNESCO's website for the
Decade of Education for Sustainable Development
(UNESCO is the lead agency in the UN system for the program.)

California students working to save energy on campuses.
CREDIT: CALIFORNIA STATE UNIVERSITY AT CHICO via Science magazine.

Education for Sustainable Development

UNESCO is the lead agency for the United Nations Decade of Education for Sustainable Development (2005-2014). The goal of the decade is to integrate the principles, values, and practices of sustainable development into all aspects of education and learning.

This educational effort is to encourage changes in behavior that will create a more sustainable future in terms of environmental integrity, economic viability, and a just society for present and future generations.

Since environmental education (EE) was defined internationally at the first UNESCO-UNEP sponsored conference on EE held in Tbilisi, Georgia, in 1977, international leaders and practitioners have gathered every decade--in Moscow in 1987 and in Thessaloniki in 1997, to take stock of the progress and to set new goals for advancing the field.

The Fourth International Conference on Environmental Education, co-sponsored by UNESCO and UNEP, is being organized by the Government of India at the Center for Environment Education (CEE), the nodal agency for the Conference. The main Conference is being held in Ahmedabad on 26, 27 and 28 November 2007, with pre Conference workshops beginning 24 November 2007.

Check out the Conference website!

Editorial: To Build the Defenses of the Environment in the Minds of Men

Today eight Live Earth concerts are to be held around the globe to raise awareness and stimulate action to combat the climate crisis. Hundreds of thousands will attend the concerts, many millions more will attend via the media, thousands of newspaper articles will cover the events. Let us hope that the seventh day of the seventh month of the seventh year of this century will be marked as the lucky day when public opinion demanded action!

Today, as is shown in the following map of intensity of environmental exploitation, mankind has converted almost all of the surface of the for human use. The world's population is expected to increase by some 40 percent by 2050, and per capita product to an average of about $20,000. Both the increase in population and the increase in economic productivity of the population will almost surely increase pressures on the global environment Unless we change our habits, the environmental impact will be devastating by the end of the century.

Source: Science, 29 June 2007, Kareiva et al., pp. 1866 - 1869

Global warming is clearly occurring. It has been estimated that the average temperature over the earth will increase by several degrees during this century. Of course many places will see a greater than average increase in average temperature, rainfall patterns will continue to change, sea level will continue to rise, adverse weather events in many places will be more frequent and/or more severe.

More and more marginal land will be converted to production, and as a result, more land is likely to be degraded. Desertification and deforestation will continue to expand. As a result of loss of habitat, perhaps as many as 90 percent of plant and animal species may be lost.

It is not only that every year we delay in moving toward sustainable development will be one more year until that felicitous state is achieved. Not only is the problem getting worse every year, the worsening rate increases and will continue to do so until we take serious action. Every year of delay will result in a later and worse bottoming out of environmental problems and a longer period of recuperation.

Many civilizations in the past have fallen as a result of asking too much of the environments in which they lived. For the first time in human history, mankind has the potential today to ask too much of the environment of the entire globe, to mark the entire earth with an ugly footprint. Unless the nations of the world act together to reduce the demands they are making on the environment, they condemn future generations to living in a degraded, polluted and denuded world.

UNESCO has an ambitious goal: to build the defenses of peace in the minds of men. I suggest that we add a second, equally ambitious goal to the organization: to build the defenses of the environment in the minds of men!

We instinctively feel that it is wrong to destroy and lay waste to the environment. I suggest that we need also a profound philosophical discussion of why sustainable development is the only ethical course for mankind. UNESCO is the only international organization that specifically includes philosophy and ethics in its charter, and thus its "Human Sciences" programs are needed to address the environmental crisis.

Many cultures worldwide have evolved to live in harmony with their environments, protecting them, sustaining a fruitful interaction for millennia. The globally dominant culture of the 20th century, however, too often identified the industrial smoke stake as its logo; was a culture that depleted resources, polluted land, water and air, and turned huge areas of the globe into wasteland. UNESCO is the only international organization that specifically focuses on Culture, and is therefore the only organization likely to help other cultures learn from those which still internalize sustainability. It is the only organization likely to lead toward a globally dominant cultural value of stewardship for the environment.

UNESCO's natural science programs are already centrally important in leading the global effort of the scientific community to understand the global environment, how it is deteriorating, and how it may be protected. It is the global natural science enterprise that brought to mankind's attention the global environmental problems that we face, and it is the natural sciences that will deepen our understanding of the problem and suggest better ways of managing and protecting that environment. Here too, UNESCO has a key role as catalyst and cheerleader.

UNESCO is the lead agency in the international system for the social sciences. The degradation of the global environment must be understood as an unintended consequence of the ways in which society is organized and functions. Mankind desperately needs insights from the social sciences as to how better to organize society to achieve a more sustainable development. UNESCO, by reorganizing and strengthening its social science programs might well provide leadership for a global social science effort towards understanding the social roots of the environmental crisis comparable to that of its natural science program's leadership in understanding the physical nature of environmental problems.

The most urgent aspect of the world's environmental crisis is that its urgency, magnitude and importance are not fully appreciated. The general public does not understand the environmental problem, nor does it fully internalize the importance of thinking in terms of 100 years; if it did so, there would be a global outcry for action. The political, commercial and economic leadership of the nations of the world need a far more detailed and complete understanding of the environmental crisis than does the general public, and it too is lacking.

UNESCO is the leading international organization for education and for communications and information. No intergovernmental agency is better placed to lead the process of educating and informing the public about the environmental crisis. Indeed, UNESCO is the United Nations agency most attuned to civil society and thus in an exceptional position to encourage non-governmental organizations to join in educating the world about the environmental crisis we face.

In short, every UNESCO program has a role to play in building the defenses of the environment and support for sustainable development in the minds of men. The environmental crisis is sufficiently important and urgent that this should become a priority for UNESCO.

If UNESCO's purpose is building the defense of peace in the minds of men, I suggest that it will not achieve that purpose unless it now builds the defenses of the environment in those same minds. The growing environmental crisis will not be good for peace. The worse it gets, the more conflict it will sew.

Please add your comments below.

If you agree strongly with this position, tell:

• The National Commission for UNESCO
• The Permanent Delegation to UNESCO

John Daly