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Dear EMS friends,

We greet you on this June 5th, 2004, World Environment Day, and invite you to spread the message of this commemoration in your different fields of action.

The dynamics and diversity of environmental changes, together with their effects on wildlife and human life, the social and economic activity of the world population, both in cities and in rural areas, are evident and permanently occurring. So far, some negative effects are also emerging and causing significant losses, many of them irreparable. No one can deny the direct relationship there is between uncontrolled international industrial development and the global environmental imbalance.

The consequences of global warming and climate change forecasted for "the day after tomorrow" in the cities of New York and Los Angeles --illustrated in the devastating scenes of a "virtual" flood caused by an Arctic glaciation--, are a well-known reality in the small Caribbean islands; the "day after tomorrow" has already reached these small insular nations. What's worse, that reality is
part of Haiti and Dominican Republic's past. Recent floods arrived there, crossed towns and fields dragging along thousands of human lives, wildlife and crops. The only thing they could not uproot was the long-standing poverty.

But this very same climate reality we experience today, seems to reflect the exaggerated contradictions of all natural phenomena, phenomena taken as normal until very recently. In fact, these phenomena do not only manifest as floods of the type seen in movies --that can devastate large cities--, but also as terrible droughts that affect rural areas directly and bring, in ruthless consequence, irreparable hunger, soil erosion and desertification.This overwhelming reality that is present both on the screen and in daily suffering, should appeal to our reflection these days.

For this reason, we invite you to participate and promote presentations and discussions at all levels but, above all, activities directed to younger populations, to children. We should be able to reach industry and decision makers. A call for reflection is very important these days but above all, we should support each city and each specific sphere with concrete actions. To promote and make efforts to reach out people at the local and community levels, those related to international environmental agreements promoted by the United Nations. To highlight the latter would be of strategic importance for the future of our planet. Here, in the Americas, we must promote new environmental bridges to connect common initiatives between the inhabitants of South and North America.

On this special day, the EMS makes its humble contribution by providing assistance through its programs geared to the prevention of natural risks in poor areas of cities, as in the case of floods; sustainable management of water basins, aquifers and the search of consensual agreements among the different social sectors to ensure an environmentally sustainable local management.

Walter Ubal Giordano
Executive Director of EMS