by Rachel Ogbu

This year’s Earth Hour will take place around the world at 8.30pm – 9.30pm on Saturday March 23.

In Nigeria, the Earth Hour will be observed at First City Plaza, Marina of First City Monument Bank Plc; Transcorp Hilton, Abuja and Le Meridien Ogeyi Place, Port-Harcourt.

Oludotun Babayemi, the Nigeria Country Director of Earth Hour at the Climate Change Capacity Building in Lagos on Saturday, March 16 said:

“Earth Hour has always been more than a light’s off campaign, and we are now seeing some extraordinary environmental outcomes on the way to achieving our long-term vision.”

“Last December, the Russian parliament passed a long-awaited law to protect the country’s seas from oil pollution; after the voices of 120,000 Russians were presented to the government during our I Will If You Will campaign for Earth Hour 2012.”

Earth Hour is a global environmental initiative in partnership with WWF. Individuals, businesses, governments and communities are invited to turn out their lights for one hour on Saturday March 23, 2013 at 8:30 PM to show their support for environmentally sustainable action.

In 2013, Earth Hour’s I Will If You Will concept invites individuals and organizations to challenge others to an ongoing environmental commitment beyond the hour. Earth Hour began in one city in 2007 and by 2012 involved hundreds of millions of people in 152 countries across every continent, receiving reports as ‘the world’s largest campaign for the planet’.

Following on from the massive success of its 120,000-strong signature petition, WWF’s Earth Hour in Nigeria has launched its 2013 campaign aiming to secure more than 20,000 signatures from Nigerian citizens to petition for passage of the Nigeria Climate Change Bill that has been with the president for assent for the past two years. If successful, it will create a Commission that is supposed to be in charge of all climate change mitigation and adaptation activities in the country.

The importance of the grassroots element of inspiration of Earth Hour is evident in the case of First City Monument Bank Plc who hosted Earth Hour in Lagos last year and gave out about 500 solar lamps to participants, Likewise Wonderbag Nigeria this year, will be giving out about 50 wonderbags.

“This year we’ve been able to get the movement to spread from two to five cities across the country, with locals and NGOs taking part in various I Will If You Will challenges,” said Hamzat Lawal of Earth Hour Nigeria.

Since 2007 when 2.2 million people took part in the first Earth Hour in Sydney, Australia, Earth Hour has massively expanded to over 7,000 cities and towns in 152 countries and territories with hundreds of millions of participants across seven continents.