Several leaders of the public and private sectors were honoured for their initiatives and commitment to a sustainable UAE at a recent World Environment Day celebration in Dubai.

The event was organised by EPIC Dubai Sustainable Living Expo in collaboration with the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and Dubai Events and Promotions Establishment (Depe) at The Address Downtown.

“I would like to congratulate you for your leadership in promoting sustainability in the way people work and live in the UAE. I am confident your work will inspire others all over the world,” said Dr John D Wiebe, president and CEO of Globe Foundation.

Louis Palmer, UNEP Champion of the Earth, and the first man to circumnavigate the planet on solar power, unveiled a solar powered car conceived in the UAE by S.S. Lootah Group at the event.

“As part of EPIC activities, we will be road testing the solar car and tour many universities to promote building solar cars in the UAE. I hope we will create a wave of enthusiasm for new solutions that will move the world,” said Palmer.

“Three weeks ago I earned the title Champion of Earth from UNEP; this is a great honor by all measures, especially today and here in the UAE where a visionary leader, the late Sheikh Zayed Bin Sultan Al Nahyan, was one of the firsts to earn the title Champion of Earth in 2005,” he added.

UNEP Representative, Naomi Poulton, revealed that at least 20 activities in the UAE have been recorded on the UNEP WED web site as of June 2, 2011.

“Such activities include the EPIC Sustainable Living Expo, tree planting, community clean ups, awareness raising campaigns such as film screenings, lectures and internal company initiatives such as energy saving and efforts to have paperless offices,” said Poulton.

“Overall we estimate that WED activities in the UAE will be up by more than 35 per cent from last year.”

The celebration concluded with a signing ceremony between Depe and Globe Foundation.

Laila Suhail, CEO of Depe, said: “we would like to express our utmost pleasure in cooperating with Globe through signing this Memorandum of Understanding, whereby we will be joining efforts in creating initiatives to further raise awareness about how to come together and protect our planet from further damage, thus saving it for the coming generations."

“Our first cooperation will be visible through EPIC, whereby we will jointly be organizing several edutainment events for the environment during the popular summer event “Dubai Summer Surprises” taking place from June 22 to July 31.”

“The core concept of DSS addresses children and families, hence, we feel that it’s the best platform to reach our target audience, for what better way to save the future of our environment than educating children from their younger years not to make the mistakes that we did,” she added. – TradeArabia News Service