Except of the priorities that each one of us sets, traditionally, the first day of the year, internationally and European-ly speaking, there are priorities set to remind us that we are not alone in this world. 2010 is the International Year of Biodiversity and the European Year of Combating Poverty and Social Exclusion.

INTERNATIONAL YEAR OFBIODIVERSITY
The United Nations declared 2010 as the International Year of Biodiversity in order to celebrate life on earth and the value of biodiversity for our lives.
“The world is invited to take action in 2010 to safeguard the variety of life on earth: biodiversity” is the welcome message of the official website of International Year of Biodiversity. Celebrations are spread all over the world and in the interactive map of the website we can see that Europe leads the celebrations with 10 events, Asia-Pacific and America follow with 9 events and Africa with 4. The Opening Event (Launch) of the International Year of Biodiversity took place in Leiden on the 28th of January.
Biodiversity is an issue of high importance for our planet, an issue that has, unfortunately, reached its red line for decades now. Scientists continue to ring the bell of extinction for rare species and they intensively stress out the importance of the variety as a factor of our future. Respect and daily care of our environment are the slightest things we can contribute in these efforts.
Let’s not forget that:

(these are some of the messages you can find at: http://www.cbd.int/2010/messages/)
In the “social media age”, that we live in, taking a look in one of the most popular web social tools in Europe (facebook) we can locate and follow the facebook-page of International Year of Biodiversity 2010. The page is almost daily updated, there are 13, 891 fans (up to now) and there are posted plenty interesting informative materials about the developments on the issue. Recently there was an invitation for brainstorming in order to help compose a “biodiversity song”, information about initiatives by UN side in Haiti, efforts from local authorities and NGOs. In case that you are interested in environmental issues this page can keep you updated for the latest happenings all around the world as it consists an effort to raise awareness for a neglected dimension of the environmental destruction.

EUROPEAN YEAR FOR COMBATING POVERTY AND SOCIAL EXCLUSION
Europe is considered as one of the richest places in the world in comparison to the other continents. Nonetheless 80 million Europeans live under the poverty line. On average, 89% of Europeans say that urgent action is needed by their national government to tackle poverty (statistics from European Commission Eurobarometer Survey On Poverty And Social Exclusion, 2009)
We should not forget that these numbers refer to faces, to human beings, to people that we see everyday around us!
The European Commission and the Spanish Presidency of the EU launched the 2010 European Year for Combating Poverty and Social Exclusion in 21st of January with an inaugural conference in Madrid.
Aims of this year’s priority are:

Oxymoron seems the fact that the 17 mln euro budget allocated for the 2010 year priority is given for raising awareness about poverty and its causes and it is not spread to all these 80 million people who are under the poverty line. These 17 mln are spread to conferences and seminars about poverty and not to poverty itself...
Undoubtedly the answer to the previous question is the “sustainability-proverb”: give a man a fish and you feed him for a day-teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.
Unfortunately the problem is much more complicated as the question of the educated “fishermen”, mainly unemployed youngsters is: Where is the “fish” to “fish”? Is there any “fish” left?