By Robin Owings
How much water (among other resources) did it take to print the millions of flyers strewn through the WWF halls?
I wish we had photo-documented this area of flyer stands throughout the week. They started out empty, then began to overfow mid-week (when this photo was taken). Try imagining the way the hallway looked at the end of the forum.
The photo shows only 3 of roughly 30 stands in the hallway. Bear in mind that this is only one hallway. Each booth at the forum will have leftover paper pamphlets, booklets, print-outs, and informational sheets… Thousands of forum schedules, schedule changes and maps will be useless after the weekend.
Maybe they should have asked the folks from Water Footprint to do a materials analysis of the conference itself… www.waterfootprint.org/
I notice that the troops are being mustered for COP18 – Doh-Doh-Doha?! – and I wonder if the resources that will be squandered on this patently useless conference and its enormous carbon footprint would not be better spent on some local initiative? Education say, or, or … a campaign along the lines of Kony 2012?
just wondering … be well, dlw.
I would hardly call Kony2012 a local initiative or a useful campaign. And while it pains me to defend the UN circus and the upcoming COP (that they chose Qatar is absolutely ludicrous, and the irony is not lost on us), I must say that a mutli lateral approach is necessary. The fact that it’s not working doesn’t mean we should abandon it, rather we should push harder for it to actually be all that it could be.
Thanks for your comment.