International Years

2007 is drawing to an end.

It has been an International Polar Year (IPY), and the UN has drawn a lot of attention to the reports from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The UN was not involved with declaring the Polar Year, but it's hard to mention one without the other up here in Norway. Besides, the UN is very keen to announce International Years for all kinds of stuff. It wouldn't have been unnatural to blame them for this one too.

The real movers of the Polar Year are the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) and International Commitee of Science (ICSU). The WMO is part-founder of IPCC as well, by the way. The other main contributor to IPCC is United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP).

There are lots of other TLA's (Three Letter Acronyms) involved, and perhaps even a couple of four letter... um... words as well. :-)

But that's about enough Bureaucrat Language for one blog entry, methinks. What d'you think they're up to for next year? Must be more of the same, right?

Right. So lets poke some fun at it. With, as they say, all due respect of course...

It seems, from the info floating on the web, that 2007-2009 is a bundle of three International Years together where the Polar stuff and the Climate Panel was just the start. 2008 will be the International Year of the Planet Earth. And so was 2007 and will be 2009.

But UN is certainly not any one-trick pony.

2007 has also been the International Year of the Dolphin, and of Violence Prevention. Wonder if they've got an office in Kabul.

-No, not the dolphin guys...

2008 will be the International Year of the Potato, of Sanitation, and possibly a whole host of other worthy causes.

The UN have also declared that 2005-2015 is an International Decade, entitled Water For Life (little did I know when publishing this).

I must admit I'm amazed by the sheer diversity of programmes. Good thing they stop short of the Century of the Anchovy.

And with that, I'd like to wish the Very Thin Crowd (VTC) of people reading this a Happy New Year (HNY).

Internationally. :-)

Big hugs to both of ya from Norway.