The sustainable development partnership with UNESCO
Ilosaarirock Festival announced this year partnership with UNESCO's North Karelia Biosphere Reserve. Ilosaarirock has been acknowledged as a forerunner in organizing green festival and has constantly worked for diminishing festival's ecological footprint. Joensuu Pop Musicians' Association is known for their long term innovative work on culture sector in North Karelia. Ilosaarirock encourages also the audience and partners to consider environmental aspects on their action.
This year Ilosaarirock Festival will attend nature protection and climate change adaptation concretely. Ilosaarirock will contribute compensation of the greenhouse gas emissions of the festival to the protection work of Great Crested Newt. The newt is an endangered species that has got still quite good but sparsely populations in North Karelia. Nevertheless the newt will be the one of the first species in North Karelia who will directly suffer from the climate change. The home ponds of the newt will dry up and that's why the living conditions of the newt has to be protected.
The first step of the partnership with North Karelia Biosphere Reserve was to find the most urgent and suitable target for the compensation. The Great crested newt was selected to be the lucky one throughout the discussions with Pop Musicians' Association, the biosphere reserve and the local environment authority. The amount of the compensation is 3 000 euros.
Example of the work to be done on the ponds:
- to make deeper six ponds by manpower (600 euros)
- to make deeper one pond by machine work (500 euros)
- to block up ditches by manpower (400 euros)
