Vote for Makati, Santa Rosa and San Carlos Cities In The ‘We Love Cities’ Campaign

Over half the world’s population live in cities and WWF projects a dramatic rise in urban development in the coming decades. Cities have become centers of traffic, pollution, consumption and carbon emissions.

Launched by the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) in 2011, the Earth Hour City Challenge (EHCC) is a yearlong initiative to promote sustainable practices to allow cities to transition to a low-carbon future.

Seven Philippine cities joined in August 2015 Cagayan de Oro, Makati, Naga, Parañaque, San Carlos, Santa Rosa and Quezon City. A total of 124 cities from around the world joined the 2015 to 2016 challenge.

Three cities made the final cut San Carlos City in Negros Occidental, Santa Rosa City in Laguna and Makati City in the National Capital Region. One of these can become a national Earth Hour capital, which will have a chance to be hailed as the global Earth Hour capital.

To let the voices of the people in these cities be heard, the We Love Cities (WLC) Campaign was created. WLC is a global celebration of the world’s most sustainable cities.

After juries all over the world select EHCC finalists, each city’s citizens will be able to take the challenge into cyberspace, highlighting their best initiatives to make the biggest online impressions.

The Philippine WLC Campaign shall run from 13 May to 19 June 2016. The main battlegrounds shall be on the WWF-Philippines website,campaign pages, finalist websites and across social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

Votes are counted by online polls as well as the number of hashtags used on social media. The following hashtags are to be used: #WeLoveMakatiPH, #WeLoveSantaRosaPH, and #WeLoveSanCarlosPH to vote for Makati City, Santa Rosa City, and San Carlos City, respectively. The country finalist will be taken into the international arena, where the overall finalist will receive the We Love Cities Award in Quito, Ecuador in mid-October.

“The campaign is a great way to inspire and raise awareness for sustainable development, to celebrate and further upgrade the city through suggestions, and to reward and strengthen communities through a friendly competition and healthy dialogue,” says WWF-Philippines Climate Change and Energy Programme Head Atty. Gia Ibay. “Everyone is a winner when we all try and do our part in building a sustainable future by sharing solutions and empowering one another.”

Check out the We Love Cities website at: http://www.welovecities.org.