Environmental protection and climate change present major challenges, but, despite all the attention paid to these issues over the years, our planet and its inhabitants are still no nearer to achieving air that is fit to breathe. It has now become crucial to rethink the way our businesses are run and to change our patterns of energy consumption.
The world postal sector cannot stand aside and do nothing: delivering 430 billion letters and six billion parcels worldwide each year, and operating over 600,000 postal establishments and as many vehicles makes it a significant producer of greenhouse gas. Like other organizations, we must look seriously at ways of becoming climate neutral.
With the support of its Sustainable Development Project Group, the UPU, as a UN specialized agency responsible for the postal sector, has embarked on the important task of measuring the world postal sector's carbon footprint. We hope to be able to present the results of this research at the UN Climate Change Conference taking place in Copenhagen (Denmark) in December. Then, with the assistance of the United Nations Environment Programme, with which we signed an agreement last year, and other partners, we will propose measures to designated operators to help them reduce their CO2 emissions.
All Posts are agents for change. On World Post Day 2009, I call on all members of the postal family to think more carefully about the environmental impact of our activities and, if they have not already done so, to engage in meaningful discussions about better ways of protecting our planet.
In this time of financial and economic crisis, sound management of environmental issues can be a significant driving force for growth. In taking up the challenge of green growth, businesses can rethink their logistics chain processes, improve their efficiency, plan long-term energy saving measures, develop new products and services that are less harmful to the environment - and therefore more attractive to customers - and, lastly, project a responsible business image.
Your actions within the UPU, in your business or your administration, are vitally important; but we urge you to go further by firmly committing to the UN's "Let's Seal the Deal" campaign. This initiative aims to mobilize the support of millions of individuals, businesses, community groups and other organizations for the signing at the Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen of a new international treaty to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The UPU will not fail to make the voice of the postal sector heard at this conference; make your voice heard too by signing the online petition (www.sealthedeal2009.org/petition/), and take every opportunity to urge your staff and customers to do the same.
I wish you a most successful World Post Day 2009.
