Overtaken on World Environment Day
Cyprus Tourism and local government made to rethink meaning of 'Nature at your Service'
Never could it have been anticipated that this year's WED theme, 'Forests: Nature at Your Service', could have been so undermined and misinterpreted by a multiplicity of public agents linked to local tourism development.
'Forests: Nature at your service', was never meant to be understood as license for jeopardizing urban integrity without public consultation, when coming to deforestation.
During the past 2 weeks in Limassol, The Cyprus Tourism Organization, the municipality and the Forest department's neglect have achieved that citizens mobilize themselves to highlight the need for citizen participation in establishing these urban priorities. This is to highlight that the crucial role of citizen activism in establishing the social roles of Forests as well as the environmental, economic importance at a local level.
The Forest in a Green Economy report to be released in New Delhi on 5 June, in the face of continuing deforestation (currently estimated at 5.2 million hectares worldwide per year), the report outlines how increased public and private investment in forest management and forest resources can boost employment, drastically reduce deforestation and help tackle climate change.
Forests represent many things to many people including spiritual, aesthetic and cultural dimensions that are, in many ways, priceless. But they are also cornerstones of our economies, whose full economic value has all too often been invisible in national accounts of profit and loss.
On this day, let us spread the support as to the wider world of the importance of forest to our lives and livelihoods throughout the special year 2011 but also for the years to come.