With the focus firmly on climate change Warsaw City Hall is doing its bit to encourage climate and environmental awareness in the city. Today more than 10,000 trees were planted by a group of highly motivated people, who strongly care about the environment and the effects that climate change is having on it.
“We are planning to plant as many trees as there are delegates present at the UNFCCC COP19, so we should be planting around 10,000 trees today,” said Marcin Wroblewski from the Infrastructure Department of Warsaw City Hall.
The purpose of this initiative is to offset the carbon footprint of the delegates travelling from all over the world to participate in the climate summit, and together with many other events organized by Warsaw City Hall, its aim is to stimulate climate and environmental awareness among citizens.
Taking part in the tree planting today were many environmental Non Governmental Organizations (NGOs), together with school and university students, as well as diplomatic representatives. Delegates participating in the COP were also invited to join.
“Just like any other climate effort we do, we want it to be done jointly” said Marcin Wroblewski.
This is only one of the actions being performed by Warsaw City Hall during the COP. They have many other events in store for the following weeks such as the Climate Picnic, the Tree Day and Warsaw Recycling Day. All initiatives have been ongoing since 2007.
Many other special one-off events are also taking place this week in Warsaw: the Green exhibition at the Palace of Culture and Science, where modern and pro-environmental technologies and solutions are on display; also the Warsaw Dialogue meeting which brings together city mayors of local governments and NGOs.