Exhibition to Open on 5 June United Nations (UN) World Environment Day in Oslo, Norway Featuring 40 Artists from Around the World

OSLO/BRUSSELS/NAIROBI/SAN FRANCISCO, 28 February 2007 We are at the forefront of a new era of cultural transformation, one in which we have to take bold and unequivocal actions to create and implement cross-cultural and interdisciplinary solutions to diminish the threats posed by our Earths changing climate.

In support of the internationally coordinated campaign of research marking a new era in polar science, the International Polar Year has been established for 2007-2008. Coinciding, the theme of World Environment Day 2007 is Melting Ice Hot Topic?, while the aim of the exhibit is to focus attention on the effects of climate change, and in particular, the state of our polar ecosystems and communities.

A range of events will be staged for World Environment Day in the northern Norwegian city of Troms, known as the Gateway to the Arctic, on 3 - 4 June and culminate in Oslo on 5 June with the opening of the Envisioning Change exhibition at the Nobel Peace Center. It was in Oslo in 2004 that Wangari Maathai was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for her contribution to sustainable development, democracy and peace through her grassroots environmental work with the Green Belt Movement.

UNEPs agenda for World Environment Day is to give a human face to environmental issues; empower people to become active agents of sustainable development; promote an understanding that communities are pivotal to changing attitudes towards environmental issues; and advocate partnership, which will ensure all nations and peoples enjoy a safer and more prosperous future.

This innovative exhibition brings together 40 artists from around the world to address issues confronting our changing environment as reflected in the melting and thawing of ice, snow, and permafrost from the Himalayas to Kilimanjaro, from the Andes to the Artic.

The exhibition explores such questions as What is climate change? What are the political implications? How does sustainable development create a pathway to peace? and Why should we care? The artists and artworks provide insight and answers to these questions.

The 40 artists in Envisioning Change are diverse in both style and substance.

A sampling of artworks:

1) Norwegian artist Anne Senstad, has exhibited widely internationally, including Sao Paulo, Brazil; New York, USA; and Oslo, Norway. Since 1996 she has received grants from the Norwegian Council for Cultural Affairs and The Norwegian Photography Foundation for the Arts. In 1997, Senstad started working with light and color. Through her photography, she has investigated light, color and sound by photographing pure light sources and their environmental behavioral patterns. In this exhibit Senstads color circles in Essence of Light are expanding and contracting, as in the melting or solidifying of ice. The works incorporate the circular poles of the globe; the purity of water and ice; and the melting ice of the polar caps. The viewer experiences the work as if looking through ice.

2) Canadian born artist Robert Bateman is one of the worlds foremost artists depicting the natural world. Since the 1960s Bateman has been an advocate of the environment on a global scale, earning him numerous awards including Officer of the Order of Canada (the countrys highest civilian award), the Rachel Carson Award, and he was named one of the 20th Centurys Champions of Conservation by the US National Audubon Society. His works are in the private collections of HRH The Prince Charles, HRH The Prince Philip, HRH The late Princess Grace of Monaco, HRH Bernhard, and the Prince of the Netherlands. In this exhibit Batemans painting, Antarctic Evening Humpback Whales, demonstrates his mastery of capturing the majesty and intricacy of nature.

3) Chris Jordan is one of the leading artists bridging art and the environment in the United States. Jordan has already had numerous solo exhibitions and has participated dozens of group exhibits. He has been featured in several high profile magazines and received numerous awards for his photography. For this exhibit, Jordan created an image that depicts 24,000 GMC "Denali" SUV logos, which represents six weeks of sales for that model. In Denali/Denial, the logos are arranged into a mosaic mirroring Ansel Adams famous photograph of Mt. McKinley in Denali National Park, Alaska. Half of the Denali logos are changed to read "Denial."

Artists from Norway, Sweden, Finland, Iceland, Ireland, Serbia, USA, Spain, England, Peru, Croatia, Wales, New Zealand, Japan, Argentina and more, are participating in Envisioning Change, including Fred Ivar Utsi Klemetsen, Jonas Liverod, Laura Horelli, Lucy Orta, Mona Hatoum, Subhankar Banerjeree, David Nash, Dalibor Martinis, David Buckland, Yoshiaki Kaihatsu, David Trubridge, Helen Mayer Harrison and Newton Harrison, Gary Hume, David and Hi-Jin Hodge, and dozens more.

The goal of this exhibition is to present a unique opportunity that utilizes the universal language of art as a catalyst to peacefully unite people in action and thought and to empower individuals, communities, and leaders to focus on environmental values across social, economic, and political realms.

The exhibition will open at the Nobel Peace Center in Oslo on 5 June and be on display until 20 August 2007, then travel to the Royal Museums of Fine Arts in Brussels from September through December 2007, and on to Chicago in the United States in 2008.

QUOTES FROM PARTICIPATING ORGANIZATIONS

United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP)

Achim Steiner, UN Under-Secretary General and UNEP Executive Director, said: The findings in the 2 February 2007 report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change confirm the science of human-induced climate change. These findings should strengthen the resolve of people to act now to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and put in place the medium to longer term strategies necessary to avert dangerous climate change.

Norwegian Ministry of Environment

Minister Helen Bjrny expressed that Art has the power to express the close ties between human nature and our natural surroundings, making it a powerful agent of increased environmental awareness.

Nobel Peace Center

This is an important exhibition for the Nobel Peace Center. It clearly shows how the climate changes we are all surrounded by have direct impact on world security, and therefore on peace. The wide variety of artistic expressions on display effectively states that the earths climate affects all of us said Bente Erichsen, Director, Nobel Peace Center.

Mankind's universal values of love, compassion, solidarity, caring and tolerance should form the basis for this global ethic which should permeate culture, politics, trade, religion and philosophy. It should also permeate the extended family of the United Nations said Nobel Peace Prize Laureate, Wangari Maathai.

Natural World Museum

We are taking action to encourage positive trends in society by utilizing art as a catalyst to generate new perspectives that inspire social and environmental solutions states Mia Hanak, the Founding Executive Director of the Natural World Museum.

The intent of the show is to both engage and educate, said Randy Jayne Rosenberg, the exhibitions curator. The traveling art exhibition seeks to reach millions of people in an effort to make a lasting contribution to the global dialogue around our environment in peril and inspire individuals to reflect on their attitudes and actions.

GEO Year Book 2007 Underlines Environmental Risks and Opportunities of Globalization

Global Environment Outlook Year Book 2007 Launched at UNEP's 24th Governing Council/Global Ministerial Environment Forum

Nairobi, 5 November 2007 --The fate of the world's fisheries underlines the challenges facing governments in a globalized world a new report by the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) says.

Scientists estimate that rising demand for seafood and other marine produce will lead to a collapse of today's commercial fish stocks by 2050-- unless better management is introduced.

Climate change may aggravate the situation by increasing the acidity of the oceans and seas and by bleaching coral reefs important nurseries for fish.

One management technique for countering the collapse includes a dramatic expansion of the number of marine protected areas.

Experts have found that marine protected areas, which currently cover just 0.6 per cent of the world's oceans, increase numbers of fish species by over a fifth and can boost catches in waters nearby.

Governments at the World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD) in 2002 backed a plan to develop a network of marine reserves by 2012.

But the UNEP Global Environment Outlook (GEO) Year Book 2007 says the pace at which new marine reserves are being listed means the goal will be achieved three decades after the collapse of today's commercial fisheries.

At the current rate of designation, the target will not be reached until 2085, says the GEO Year Book.

The Year Book, the work of over 80 scientists and policy experts from across the globe, has been written to inform the debate being held by environment ministers attending UNEP's 24th Governing Council-Global Ministerial Environment Forum in Nairobi, Kenya this week.

Here the risks and the opportunities of globalization and booming trans-national trade are high on the agenda during the five day long gathering.

Achim Steiner, UN Under-Secretary and UNEP Executive Director, said:” Globalization is one of the defining issues of our time. Wealth is being generated on an unprecedented scale and millions are being lifted out of poverty. But a big question mark hangs over its future and its sustainability for current and future generations.

“If rising living standards and inefficient methods of production and consumption intensify pressure on nature's natural resources from fish, freshwater and the atmosphere to forests and fragile landsglobalization could become a spectacular failure rather than a saviour, he added.

The question is not whether globalization is good or bad but whether we have in place the regulations, creative economic instruments, guidelines, rules and partnerships that ensure it delivers the widest possible benefits at the minimum price to the planet and thus to its people in other words do we have the international environmental governance structures in place, firing on all cylinders, to match and guide the powerful engine of globalization. This is the question before us today and among the answers to a range of issues we seek from ministers attending this UNEP GC/GMEF in 2007, said Mr Steiner.

The GEO Year Book outlines a range of options able to steer globalization onto a more intelligent, environmentally, economically responsible and sustainable course if more widely deployed and enthusiastically adopted.

The report acknowledges the importance of responsible business and the power of consumerism to direct globalization factors that can play an increasingly significant role if governments heed calls by the private sector for 21st century regulation and consumers are fully and properly informed.

Certification
The GEO Year Book flags the challenge of forestry and the importance of certification. An estimated 10.5 million hectares- or three per cent- of natural production forests-- in International Tropical Timber Organization member states are now covered under certification schemes.

These could be expanded to other natural resources and complimented by green procurement policies. Here governments need to set in place environmental standards right along the supply change says the GEO Year Book.

The Role of Financial Institutions
Environmental accountability is also emerging from lending institutions as a result of growing awareness among multinationals of the marketing advantages of adopting corporate social responsibility initiatives.

The GEO Year Book cites the case of soya production in Brazil. Here a recent loan of $30 million by the International Finance Corporation to Grupo Andre Maggi companywhich finances 500 soy producers-- was predicated on higher environmental, agricultural and social standards.

Paying for Maintaining Ecosystems
Payment for ecosystem services offers another potentially fruitful path one that gives greater value to the wider economic benefits of ecosystems and attempts to identify and compensate the communities and the countries responsible for maintaining them.

The GEO Year Book highlights the case of the Panama Canal, an economically important man-made waterway that moves an estimated 279 million metric tonnes of goods between the Atlantic and the Pacific.

The canal depends on water from reservoirs to lift boats up over the isthmus cordillera. Over the last few decades deforestation around the high reservoirs has led to a number of problems for the Panama Canal System especially a shortage of water in some seasons, says the report.

A forestry re-insurance company is proposing a 25 year bond, paid for by ship owners, some of the profits from which will pay for re-afforestation of vulnerable water catchments.

Other Creative Market Mechanisms
The GEO Year Book also underlines how pump priming and relatively small amounts of well targeted and creative financial support can radically propel markets onto a more sustainable track.

It cites the case of a three year old partnership between organizations like UNEP and two Indian banks aimed at promoting solar power on the Indian sub Continent.

By using the economic instrument of preferential interest rates, the partnership has led to the financing of over 17,000 solar home systems supplying clean energy to over 100,000 people.

A similar initiative is underway in Tunisia aimed at benefiting consumers and the international fight against climate change.

The GEO Year Book not only underscores existing challenges, that have become even more pressing through the effects of globalization, but also presents new and emerging challenges that result from rapid technological developments.

The New Opportunities and Risks of Technology Nanotechnology
It cites the rise of nanotechnology the engineering of surfaces and particles at sizes one billionth of a metre.

The technology, which currently accounts for around 0.1 per cent of the global manufacturing economy, is set to take 14 per cent-- or 2.6 trillion US dollars worth-- of the market by 2014.

Nanotechnologies applied to devices and techniques are being used as innovative and more effective forms of pollution monitors and as, for example, to window coatings that save energy by concentrating solar power on cool days.

Other products include more effective and targeted forms of pest contro and anti-pollution particles able to cleanse toxins from the air, land and water day in day out.

But the report warns: It is not clear whether current regulatory frameworks are adequate to deal with the special characteristics of nanotechnology. To date no government has developed a regulatory framework specific to nanotechnology. A balanced approach is required to maximize benefits while minimizing risks.

Notes to Editors
The Global Environment Outlook (GEO) Year Book 2007 can be found at www.unep.org/geo/yearbook

The site also carries information on previous Year Books.

The 2007 edition can be purchased at www.earthprint.com priced $20.00

Documents, reports, issues on the 24th session of UNEP's Governing Council/Global Ministerial Environment Forum are available at http://www.unep.org/gc/gc24/

Nick Nuttall, UNEP Spokesperson,