The World Earth Day was recently celebrated in Nairobi, Kenya with the theme: Your Planet Needs You, Unite to Combat Climate Change. It is an urgent call for nations to join in addressing climate by reducing their carbon footprint, and improving the management of forests and other valuable natural resources.

UN Environment Programme Executive Director Achim Steiner in his message called for an action plan termed "Seal the Deal" – that is, work together to find a solution that is scientifically credible, equitable and economically-defensible. This is directed towards investments in various programs for clean technologies and "natural" infrastructure such as forests and soils that will be the best option for combating climate change and triggering an employment boom in this century.

The first Earth Day was celebrated in 1970, a landmark in the history of the environment movement which gave birth to the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) to address basic issues on air quality and water pollution. Since then, intelligent management of the planet is the focus of many initiatives by the international community.

For details, see press release at http://www.unep.org/Documents.Multilingual/Default.asp?DocumentID=579&ArticleID=6133&l=en&t=long.