One of two eight-metre long UPU banners designed to show the postal sector’s support for a climate change deal in Copenhagen will be part of the Climate Maze, set up in a main square of Copenhagen (Kongens Nytorv) from 6 to 18 December 2009.
Hundreds of public and private postal-sector members, including top CEOs, have stamped and signed their names to the UPU’s Seal the Deal banners over the past few months, mostly at major postal events in Europe.
The United Nations Environment Programme’s Climate Maze invites the public to view and “negotiate” their way through the hundreds of cloth banners signed around the world. Each one urges world leaders meeting in Copenhagen to reach a new climate-change deal.
The UPU banner looks like an envelope and is addressed to: WORLD LEADERS, COPENHAGEN, DENMARK. The message PLEASE SAVE THE PLANET stretches across the envelope.
Dorcas Scantlebury, deputy postmaster general of Barbados, and Larysa Stefanenko, director of international affairs at the Ukrainian Post, signed the banners with purpose.
“We are such a tiny island. People wonder if the high tide will make us disappear one day,” said Scantlebury. “Small island states depend on their beaches for tourism, an important motor of the economy. Concluding an agreement on climate change is a social and economic issue for us. We hope there will be a positive conclusion and more than a declaration in Copenhagen.”
Stefanenko said she was concerned about the icecaps melting and polar bears losing their habitat. “I hope this action will help us do something to better protect all of mankind,” she said.
The UPU is leading a worldwide initiative to capture existing best “green” postal practices. The organization wants to help operators with environment programmes continue cutting CO2 emissions and help others to take steps now to avoid being major polluters tomorrow.
In time for Copenhagen, the UPU will this week disclose the results of the first global inventory of greenhouse gas emissions produced by the vehicles and buildings operated by the Posts of its 191 member countries.