Strategies For the Caribbean Region and Gulf Coast States  

Learn Best Blue Community Practices at 

Walt Disney World, Orlando, Florida USA
May 3-6, 2011

At the Blue Community Conference 2011, you'll interact with celebrated sustainability, disaster reduction and economic development leaders, innovators, and change-agents. Learn best Blue Community practices, critical knowledge, and develop winning partnerships to prepare your company or community, for a world where people, profits and the environment are uniquely interconnected. The conference is brought to you by the International Oceans Institute Waves of Change campaign, Friends of the United Nations and The Caribbean American Chamber of Commerce.

Early Bird Offer Expires

December 31, 2010

The Conference is being held at the Walt Disney World Coronado Springs Resort, Florida.

Click Here to Make Hotel Reservations

Who Should Attend?

• Government officials
• Resorts and related tourism industry
• College and University Students, Faculty, and Administrators
• Economic Development staff
• Environmental Ministers and/or staff
• Environmental NGO’s
• Individuals interested in the Blue Community conference topics and agenda
   
  

Sustainability, Disaster Reduction, and Economic Development will be the three major themes of the Blue Community Conference.

Sustainability 

The Blue Community conference provides sustainability strategies for energy, water, food, transportation, health, and much more.  Each topic includes models of best practices and a hands-on opportunity to see how Walt Disney World is strategically addressing these concerns.

Disaster Reduction & Vulnerability Management 

The United Nations International Strategies for Disaster Reduction program has identified sustainability as the best way to prevent, mitigate, and recover from potential disasters. The Blue Community conference will provide a number of best practices for disaster reduction and vulnerability management.

Economic Development & Eco-Friendly Tourism

For a travel and leisure company to utilize Blue Community strategies they must be economical. Walt Disney World shares the economic benefits of their sustainability program. The Blue Community program will provide strategies to enhance eco-friendly tourism and reduce costs in areas such as: energy, fertilizer, water, transportation, and other strategies to both attract tourism, and reduce costs of resort operations.

Muriel chats with Dr Noel Brown, former Director of the United Nations Environment Program – who was one of the founders of UNEP, he worked there from 1973-1995 .

Dr. Brown, Former Director of UNEP (North America) and is now President, Friends of the UN

Dr. Brown has been considered an environmental diplomat and a great champion for the cause of earth. He spends a great deal of his time these days focusing on the Oceans, as a Member of the Board of Governors of the International Ocean Institute (IOI) and a director of Training for IOI, Canada in Halifax, Nova Scotia. The IOI is about to launch a five Year Global Campaign under the banner: Wave of Change for the Protection of the Marine Environment and the Sustainable Use of its Resources.
He’ s also actively involved in the organization of the: Coastal Cities Summit: Values and Vulnerabilities , scheduled to be held in St. Petersburg, Florida, Nov. 17-20, 2008.

Listen to Dr. Noel Brown Interview

The International Center for the Responsibility to Protect has collected full transcripts of most of the statements and made them available online via: http://tinyurl.com/r2ptranscripts

The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) invites YOU to join the global chorus calling on world leaders to seal the deal on a global agreement to combat climate change.

Seal the Deal! is a United Nations campaign to encourage governments to agree to a fair, balanced and effective climate agreement when they meet in Copenhagen this December.

Seal the Deal! is about mobilizing individuals and communities on an ambitious scale to raise a strong call for urgent and united action on climate change. It's about YOU and your future, and the world we leave for our children.

The latest science shows our climate is changing more rapidly than expected. Millions of people are already suffering from the effects of climate change. Hundreds of millions more - including YOU - could be affected if we don't act immediately.

While leadership at the highest level is needed to protect the planet and build a more sustainable global economy, concerted action by all is what will make the real difference. Every voice counts!

What you can do!

Sign the Climate Petition now at www.sealthedeal2009.org - or visit an event where you can dip a People's Seal in ink and stamp the global petition.

Help spread the Seal the Deal! message. Download the logo and other resources.

Take part in Global Climate Week (21-25 September) and other campaign activities.

Look for Seal the Deal! on Facebook and World Climate Community.

Join the debate on Twitter at http://twitter.com/unepandyou. Stay tuned! Register via the website to receive campaign updates.

Click to download the campaign logo and design templates: www.sealthedeal2009.org/index.php/download/

Click to view videograms of support: www.sealthedeal2009.org/index.php/videograms.html Find out more!

Visit www.sealthedeal2009.org or send an email to: sealthedeal@unep.org. Please consider sharing this with your respective networks.

Thanks 

Jim Sniffen

Programme Officer

UN Environment Programme

New York tel: +1-212-963-8094/8210 info@nyo.unep.org www.nyo.unep.org *********************************

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World leaders came together in New York on 25 September 2008 for a high-level event convened by the UN Secretary-General and the President of the UN General Assembly to renew commitments to achieving the Millennium Development Goals by 2015 and to set out concrete plans and practical steps for action.

We're not talking about Frontline. Or Nightline. This is Battlestar Galactica, the SciFi channel's brooding, often brutal re-imagining of the cheesy '70s-vintage series.

Again and again, the writers and producers of BSG have put a civilization in immediate peril and asked how far its leaders ought to go to protect it. Tonight, the story comes to an end with the critically acclaimed series' final episode.

To mark the show's finale, its fans at the United Nations — people whose nonfictional jobs involve wrestling with similar issues day in and day out — invited the cast and producers to visit the U.N. for a two-hour panel discussion and talk-back.

On Tuesday, some 500 people took seats in the chamber, a stiff, formal space with miles of dull, blonde wood. (Delegates have come from some exotic-sounding, faraway places to the U.N. building in Manhattan, but it was probably the first time they were there representing other planets.)

Whoopi Goldberg, a UNICEF ambassador as well as an Oscar-winning actor, served as the panel's moderator. U.N. representatives joined actors Edward James Olmos, who played the commander of the show's title warship, and Mary McDonnell, who starred as President Laura Roslin, his civilian superior. Ron Moore and fellow BSG executive producer David Eick also sat on the panel.

Battlestar Galactica is part of a venerable tradition of science fiction that examines politics and society, says Lou Anders, editorial director for the sci-fi publisher Pyr books.

Take the third season, which hit the air in 2006. Here in the real world, that was a particularly bloody time in the Iraq War. On Battlestar Galactica, the surviving human population of the Twelve Colonies — the show's heroes — were the insurgents fighting a resistance against an occupying army of Cylons.

"We were in the midst of a war against an enemy which employs suicide bombers," says Anders. "[And on the show,] the protagonists turn into terrorists — and bomb not only the Cylons, but their own people they view as collaborators."

That's strong stuff for an American TV audience. But not simplistic stuff.

"I think the show tried very hard over the course of its run not to say guess what, here are the answers to these problems," says Eick. He emphasizes that the show wanted to raise questions about torture, nuclear war and how people with conflicting religious beliefs use them to shape political decisions.

McDonnell, whose character sacrificed thousands of innocent civilians, abolished reproductive choice, executed enemy combatants without trial and nearly stole an election over the course of the program, says she wanted to show that leaders who make autocratic decisions aren't always doing it just to be evil.

"People who are taking these actions — that are unacceptable — are sometimes in positions where they don't see the solution," she says. "The experience of that is what we wanted to expose to our audience."

McDonnell hopes that dramatizing the way decent leaders can come to wrong decisions in tough situations will create more of a dialogue about other ways to use power.

Although debates about terrorism and human rights have receded to the background for many Americans, Battlestar Galactica may help the U.N. meet the challenge of reaching a broader audience.

Naimah Hakim, a 16-year-old sophomore from Westchester, was one of a hundred New York high-school students in attendance. To her, the show brings home issues in a way that most of her classroom lessons don't.

"When you're watching the show, you don't question why you have to learn it," she says. "You understand because it's something that hits the nail on the head."

Listen To NPR Story 

A new film casting the work of the United Nations in the starring role has its world premiere today at the Organization’s Headquarters in New York.

“Planet UN” is a documentary featuring the world body at the beginning of the 21st century as it takes on the enormous challenges threatening global stability today and in the future.

The film calls for an unprecedented and concerted global effort to confront threats such as food and energy shortages, climate change, terrorism, nuclear threats and the collapse of the international financial system among others.

“Through the exploration of three major themes: peacekeeping, development and human rights, this film presents a look at the UN as it works to confront the challenges of this century,” UN Under-Secretary-General for Communications and Public Information Kiyo Akasaka told a news conference ahead of tonight’s premiere.

In addition to academic and diplomatic dignitaries, including Noam Chomsky, the documentary highlights interviews with Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon along with a number of other senior UN officials.

The 52-minute film is directed by French documentary-maker Romuald Sciora, who created four television shorts in 2006 called the Glass Building, which included footage of former Secretaries-General reminiscing about the 60-year history of the world body. 

Underscoring the need to create awareness of the UN, Mr. Sciora said, “In the West we really don’t know what the UN is doing for the population of particular countries. In some countries the UN is the only thing that is helping them on a daily basis.”

In a bid to reach a wider audience, a Marvel comic strip is planned for publication with action heroes, such as Spiderman and Batman, appearing in scenes focusing on the work of the UN. 

“You’ll find this refreshing and lively in terms of how the UN is portrayed in a very genuine way,” said Amir Dossal, Executive Director of the UN Office for Partnerships.

A book with the same name published by Le Monde Diplomatique and Harper’s Magazine is also slated to accompany the film along with a DVD.

Leaders from around the world lashed out at American leaders and bankers for creating a global financial crisis.

The MILESTONES Project Is a photographic tribute to our shared humanity. It is a living, growing archive of over 20,000 photographs that assert, powerfully and indisputably, our fundamental human similarities. Picture infants from every corner of the world, aglow with Joy, their faces lit by a single birthday candle. Picture children of every nationality, eyes squeezed tight in nervous excitement, as a scissor trims away their baby curls. Picture children in urban streets and rutted, rural roads, walking hand In hand with a best friend. Who cannot see herself in these images? Who cannot feel the brotherhood of man?

But photographs alone cannot heal the worlds divisions. Healing requires action, and that is why these photographs reproduced in books, exhibits and on a website, disseminated through partnerships with schools, foundations and corporations are more than arresting, heartwarming images. They are the backbone of a global social movement. They are at the heart of a campaign endorsed by the United Nations that enables individuals around the world to take concrete action to promote tolerance.

HOW WILL WE DO IT

These are the aims and objectives of Peace on Earth, and together we will achieve them. We will generate global awareness towards the social, environmental and spiritual benefits of the arts and artists and their potential contribution to global peace. We will reinforce the use of arts for humanity’s sake and for life’s sake as we move from Art for Art’s sake. We will emphasize multiculturalism while preserving the essence of (local) traditional cultures. We will picture a world where digital murals and otfier aesthetic expressions are encouraging global harmony and world peace to creole a global network and culture of Peace and Tolerance. We will launch further projects and programs that will contribute to the vision of Art as a Global Peace Expression. We will assure success by creating and empowering an effective organization featuring a Patron’s Group, Sponsor’s Group, International Advisory Board, Board of Directors ond Participating Countries.

“If the human family is to have any hope of living together in peace, we must come to know and accept one another. Let us recognize the work for tolerance begins with each and every one of us.”

Over the next two years, three high-profile media products will tell the story of the United Nations’ Sergio Vieira de Mello and introduce audiences to the kind of conviction and insight that inspires movements. In the months ahead we’ll be using the momentum generated by these products – a book by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Samantha Power, a compelling feature length documentary, and a major motion picture – to embark on a new campaign designed to educate Americans on Sergio’s life and lessons… and to use his story to ignite a dynamic constituency that demands a smarter foreign policy for the United States.

Please join us at www.chasingtheflame.org where Power will join an eclectic group of scholars, activists, humanitarians and citizens from around the world to reflect on Sergio’s life and legacy, provoke debate, and discuss how this movement can have the greatest impact possible.

1. Diversity in Your Community
2. Human Rights
3. Do-It-Yourself Tolerance Program
4. No to Violence
5. Ecological, Diversity and Human Diversity
6. Religious Tolerance
7 Current Events
8. Sports and Tolerance
9. Creativity at Work
10. International Link-ups

These guidelines are intended to stimulate creative thinking in municipalities and parliaments, schools and universities, clubs and associations, work places, non governmental organizations, and the media in Member States of every region, toward the observance of the annual International Day for Tolerance on 16 November.

At the initiative of UNESCO, 1995 was declared the United Nations Year for Tolerance, and it saw the launching of a world-wide campaign for tolerance and non-violence. The International Day for Tolerance grew out of the momentum of that Year.

Building tolerance and trust in diverse communities is not done overnight, but takes time and commitment. Building tolerance requires access to education. Intolerance is often rooted in ignorance and fear; fear of the unknown, of the other, other cultures, religions and nations. Intolerance is also closely linked to an exaggerated sense of self-worth and pride: notions taught and learned at an early age. Therefore in coming years, we need to place greater emphasis on educating children about tolerance, human rights and fundamental freedoms.

But we should not forget that education does not end in school, that adults - Firstly as individuals capable of committing acts of intolerance but more importantly in their capacity as parents, law-makers and law-enforcement officials - also need to be considered a priority target of our educational efforts.

The Friends of the United Nations created an initiative in support of the Decade for the Culture of Peace.

The United Nations has declared 2002/2010 as an International Decade for the Culture of Peace and Non-violence for the Children of the World. In doing so the United Nations was to remind the world that “while the abolition of war, more than ever a scourge, must remain at the center of the priorities of mankind, this task requires the transformation not only of its institutional structures and manifestations, but also of its deep cultural roots and of the culture of violence and war into a culture of peace.” It also invited governments and peoples everywhere to undertake initiatives and activities that would contribute to the building of a culture of peace.

In keeping with its mission to promote the principles and values of the United Nations Charter and support the work of the Organization the Friends of the United Nations plans to organise Global Campaign around the theme “Building a Culture of Peace and Tolerance through the Arts”. Our aim is to utilise the arts as a tool to inspire, promote and popularize the message for peace and tolerance as outlined by the United Nations.