The 2010 UN International Year of Biodiversity (IYB) won the influential Green Award for the Best Green International Campaign. This new award marks the first time that the Green Awards have recognised a global campaign.

The IYB-UK team joined communications agency Futerra, to watch Ahmed Djoghlaf, Executive Secretary for the Convention on Biological Diversity, receive the award on 2 December 2010, at a ceremony which was held in the Central Hall at the Natural History Museum in London.

The Award rewards creativity in sustainability and the most effective effort to communicate sustainability and environmental issues to international audiences across more than one country.

The Green Awards judges said: ‘a very beautiful, well executed and informative campaign. It has helped to mainstream biodiversity from being a very technical and very bureaucratic subject to one of global concern and hope. This logo and message has been very widely seen during 2010 in cultures and languages as diverse as biodiversity itself! Biodiversity is the most overlooked, sustainability issue.’

The goal of the International Year of Biodiversity was to raise awareness of the value of, and the need to conserve biodiversity, and to provide partners across the world with the tools and inspiration to encourage action. The branding and messaging for the year was commissioned by the Convention on Biological Diversity, created by Futerra and rolled out by key catalyst organisations around the world like the Natural History Museum, secretariat for the UK partnership for IYB (IYB-UK).

The International Year of Biodiversity logo and core messaging was adopted in 146 countries, and in 29 languages, and was seen by millions of people from Brazil to Britain, Georgia to Japan. In Britain over 450 organisations, including ENGOs, faith groups, academia, arts/cultural organisations and government joined the IYB-UK partnership, co-ordinated from the Museum, to support the International Year during 2010. 

One of the key events during IYB in the UK, the first Global Business of Biodiversity symposium at the Excel Centre organised by Ten Alps with support from IYB-UK was also nominated for a Green Award in the category of Best Green Event Award (Shows/Exhibitions). 

The evening began with Sir David Attenborough CBE receiving the first ever Green Lifetime Achievement Award, for his outstanding contribution to promoting biodiversity to the public.

Of the other Green Award winners, another iyb-uk partner, the National Trust, won the Best Green Event Award (Shows/Exhibitions) for their ‘A Plant in Time – a touring exhibition’.