Monday, June 04, 2007

World Environment Day 2007 - June 5th

For the past few days, I've had the nagging feeling that I'm missing reasons why June 5th was an important day. Two of my best friends are flying back from Europe tomorrow, it is my former personal assistant's birthday (he was simply phenomenal, the best project assistant I ever had). But I still kept thinking "why am I so concerned about June 5th?"

Well, now I know. It's World Environment Day. The slogan for this WED is "Melting Ice - A Hot Topic?", trying to emphasize climate change as an important issue to be addressed. As I have told my good friend H a few times, my real concern is that when people think about environmental or sustainability issues, their heads invariably turn to climate change.

Climate change is an important issue, but not the only one. Urban form, sprawl, food security, HIV/AIDS, homelessness and poverty alleviation are also very important issues. Why do people keep forgetting that climate change is only one of them is beyond me. That being said, and I have said it before, if I have the chance to do some climate change-related project where poverty is directly addressed, I'm happy to jump at the opportunity.

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