Stockholm holds the European Green Capital Award 2010. The title is an initiative of the European Commission and goes to the city that exemplifies leadership in environmental issues by sharing experiences, best practices, thoughts and ideas. Since winning, Stockholm has launched numerous initiatives, continuing its active engagements to raise awareness on environmental issues. Find out more about Stockholm’s initiatives and the 2012 and 2013 winners in our newsflash.

This year's 'Communication Initiative of the Year Award' goes to an ambitious Austrian campaign promoting biodiversity awareness. This award was launched in 2006 by the Green Spider Network (GSN) as an annual best practice competition on environmental communication. The Living Diversity campaign presented in this newsflash constitutes a comprehensive set of actions, which aim to engage as many Austrians as possible in nature conservation. Find out more about the various successful initiatives of this campaign.

Resource efficiency will be the European Commission’s 2011 focus topic. It is closely related to other environmental issues and reflects the growing scarcity of resources. The EU has already set up an action plan and several instruments to encourage the development of resource efficiency processes and projects. Several initiatives are also taking place at the national level, with communication being an important aspect of this emerging issue.

Green Week was organised in 2010 for the tenth time, focusing this year on biodiversity. This annual EU environmental policy event serves each year as the occasion for environmental organisations, networks and other stakeholders to meet and exchange ideas on how best to protect our environment. Six teams from the Green Spiders were at Green Week this year, presenting their national campaigns on biodiversity.

2010 is the International Year of biodiversity. The EU campaign launched in March focuses on this issue, with the aims of triggering awareness and encouraging action to protect biodiversity. After a newsflash issue in November 2009 which gave a general overview of the campaign and its development,  the current edition presents specific actions of the campaign, such as public events and a facebook application, as well as some national initiatives related to biodiversity.

2010 is  the International Youth Year and is also halfway through the 2005-2014 decade of Education for Sustainable Development. This combination of events places young people in the spotlight for environmental communication. They are indeed very interesting targets for the latter, acting as intermediaries for environmental messages and being the adults of tomorrow. However, children and young people represent a specific audience, and environmental communication and education should be designed accordingly. Read more about this in our newsflash.