World Environment Day is celebrated every year on June 5. Globally, events supporting positive environmental action have been held on this day since 1972.
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Twenty years ago on this day the ground-breaking Pathways to Sustainability: Local Initiatives for Cities and Towns international conference was held at Newcastle City Hall. The five-day conference was endorsed by the United Nations. Speakers came from over 30 countries. The event drew together some of the world’s leading thinkers, local politicians, business people, local government and the community. It was one of the most important events of Newcastle’s bicentenary celebrations and culminated in the Newcastle Declaration committing our city to a sustainable future.
“Gathered at Newcastle, Australia on World Environment Day, 5 June 1997, we acknowledge that in the five years since the Rio Earth Summit much has been learnt about implementing the concept of sustainable development. There is growing evidence, however, that the future of all life on Earth is still in peril. There is an urgent need to accelerate and assist action at all levels, particularly locally, if the global sustainable development objectives of Agenda 21 are to be realised”.
Over the following 20 years we have seen the innovative ClimateCam initiative of the Newcastle City Council, which allowed the public to visualise and thus decrease energy consumption across the city through the ClimateCam billboard ClimateCam in schools program; the Smart Future Cities Program; and the establishment of UN training centre in disaster preparedness CIFAL at the University of Newcastle. World Environment Day on June 5 is a call to arms for the planet to build on these foundations not to let them lie fallow in the archives.
