Climate change theme of this year's World Environment Day
By Imelda V. Abaño

The theme for this year’s June 5 World Environment Day is “Your Planet Needs You-UNite to Combat Climate Change.” It reflects the urgency for nations to agree on a new deal at the crucial climate convention meeting in Copenhagen some 180 days later in the year. Currently, world governments are in Bonn, Germany, until June 12 tackling the details of a new UN treaty that is to take effect after 2012 to combat global warming.
The impact of climate change is being felt around the globe, and some of the poorest of the world’s poor are feeling the consequences of the fossil-fuel emissions by industrialized nations half a world away.
Every year, poor people in developing countries, including the Philippines—mainly farmers and fishermen—face the effects of climate change, which are causing massive flooding and droughts, and severe storms, the last often unleashing a fury such as that never before seen in decades, or centuries.
fishermen in the developing countries are also suffering from the consequences of global warming as their catch decline year after year.
“Our catch is dwindling, our shanties are being blown away and we noticed that the ocean is rising,” says Joseph Lalata, a Filipino fisherman in Pangasinan, who has lived near the Lingayen Gulf all his life.
Lalata laments that people have no explanation for why fish catch is becoming less and less, and why the ocean is advancing. He complains that floods occasionally destroy the stick shacks that make up their village.
When asked whether they have heard of climate change, he replies in the negative, but obviously has felt the impact without knowing the phrase: “Before, the sea was far away, but now it’s beneath our feet. We don’t know why.”
While no country or region of the world is safe from climate change, millions of struggling people who live on less than a dollar a day, face unprecedented hardship.
Climate change has a real impact on communities and individuals around the world. Some of them are losing their islands or have lost their farmlands.
According to climate scientists, climate change refers to a change in the average surface temperature of the world over an extended period—typically decades or longer—due to a combination of natural variability and human activity.
The warning of the planet was unequivocally declared a reality by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)—the international scientific body which assesses and reports on existing climate-change research—in its Fourth Assessment Report released in November 2007.
The world has warmed by an average of 0.74°C in the past 100 years as a result of human activity. The warming is caused by excessive greenhouse-gas (GHG) emissions in the atmosphere. the IPCC predicts that if GHG emissions continue to rise at their current rate, this century will see a further 3°C rise in the average world temperature.
“The future changes may be so much different from what is now being experienced. Climate change in the future could be some kind of surprises the least to expect,” says Rosa Perez, former chief of the Philippine Atmospheric, Geophysical and Astronomical Services Administration and the lead author of the Fourth Assessment Report of the IPCC-Working Group II.
World Environment Day (WED) is celebrated on June 5 every year and has been celebrated since 1972. It is one of the principal vehicles through which the United Nations stimulates worldwide awareness of the environment and enhances political attention and action.
The theme this year is, “Your Planet Needs You—UNite to Combat Climate Change.” According to UNEP, this reflects the urgency for nations to agree on a new agreement at the crucial climate-convention meeting in Copenhagen some 180 days later in the year, and the links with overcoming poverty and improved management of forests.
WED 2009 celebrations will focus on the solutions and the opportunities for countries, companies and communities to “Unite to Combat Climate Change.” Measures include watershed management and maintenance, as well as tree-planting to counter rises in greenhouse gases.