"Environmental Signals"

 

On January 9 was presented in Prague (in honour of the Czech Republic's presidency of the EU), "Environmental Signals" the report published at the beginning of each new year by the European Environment Agency (EEA).
The report provides an image on the environmental situation in the member countries, focusing on many environmental issues like climate change, waste management, bioenergy and biodiversity.
The report is published in all 26 languages, and any environmental topic is explained and told through a story. The stories are devoid of technicalities and have a strong communicative power for their concreteness and immediacy, in order to raise awareness on environmental issues among the widest possible audience.
In the introduction Jacqueline McGlade, executive director of  EEA writes: "we must recover a sense of humility towards the natural world because, as the natives have long time understood, it is to nature that we must ultimately answer. The nature has its rules and its limits. Our natural world is the foundation, not the background of our society.
With "Environmental Signals" we intend to contribute to this recognition of the natural environment. We hope so to influence the thoughts and attitudes, as well as the decisions that we all take every day.
This will be a historic year for the environment, which will culminate with a major UN Summit on Climate Change in Copenhagen next December. The summit, perhaps the largest environmental conference to date, would have to succeed the Kyoto Protocol.
Emissions of greenhouse gases are just a symptom of a much deeper problem: our inability to live sustainably. The great scope of these environmental issues must not paralyze us and lead to inaction, but should raise awareness and encourage us to develop new and more sustainable life, growth, production and consumption. After all, we are talking of giving back value to the fundamental elements of our lives. In a time when money markets are looking for guidance, maybe the environment can show the way.'