Berd, Tavoush Region, Republic of Armenia © Onnik Krikorian / Oneworld Multimedia 2004

Although no Armenian bloggers — including myself — appeared to specifically mark the occasion, yesterday was Blog Action Day. According to the official site for the action, 15,000 blogs communicated environmental concerns to 12 million readers. This also included companies such as Google and organizations such as the United Nations. For Blog Action day, those bloggers interested were requested to:

1. Publish a post on their blog which relates to an issue of their own choice pertaining to the environment.

For example: A blog about money might write about how to save around the home by using environmentally friendly ideas. Similarly a blog about politics might examine what weight environmental policy holds in the political arena.

Posts do not need to have any specific agenda, they simply need to relate to the larger issue in whatever way suits the blogger and readership. Our aim is not to promote one particular viewpoint, only to push the issue to the table for discussion.

2. Commit to donating their day’s advertising earnings to an environmental charity of their choice. There is a list of “official” Blog Action Day charities on the site, however bloggers are also free to choose an alternate environmental charity to donate to if they wish.

Bloggers were also requested to promote the event itself, so in a sense that’s what Oneworld Multimedia has decided to given that time has not allowed specific coverage of an environmental issue. Other blogs such as SEO 2.0 also decided to do the same and points its readers in the direction of what the site considers to be the ten best environmental blogs on the Internet.

For Blog Action Day I chose not to bore you with my uninformed musings on a green topic. I am not a environmental activist or green blogger myself so I rather tell you where to go to read what’s going on, check out the best 10 green blogs.

I’m a reader of some of those for years now, others I discovered just recently via StumbleUpon, blogroll links or simply Google. So here is the list, the most important and well known blogs dealing with ecology and a sustainable lifestyle come first:

Interestingly, however, although Armenian bloggers did not specifically take part in Blog Action Day, they did at least coincidentally cover a breaking environmental story which has been in the news here for the past few days. The specific issue concerns the destruction of Garni’s Symphony of Stones. Zarchka at Life Around Me posted an entry on the latest environmental controversy to hit Armenia last week.

The Armenian Observer has more and says most of those taking part in a demonstration staged in Yerevan yesterday were actually Live Journal bloggers.

A protest action took place today, October 15, at 13:00 in front of the Government Building on Republi Square aiming to stop the destruction of the unique natural rock formation, called “Symphony of Stones” in Garni, near the beautiful pagan temple which is a prime tourism destination for Armenia. […]

[…]

The case was further actively advocated by a number of Armenian blogs, a special blog was set up to pursue the case and help stop vandalism at http://bnamard.blogspot.com/. Some of the other blogs to proactively cover the issue were: Life around me, Kornelij Glas, Bekaisa, Aerial-Vortex, Freedom Fighter, Ahousekeeper and others. The problem was also on the center of attention also on a number of Armenian forums, including: OpenArmenia and Armkb, although I daresay, most of the forum users and moderators are also LiveJournal bloggers.

So, whether they knew it or not, Armenian bloggers did take part in the online environmental action while probably being unaware that they were. In a sense, that’s probably how it should be given that such issues should be raised whenever there is a need. Indeed, I’ve raised the issue of the importance of blogging as a tool for raising awareness with Armenia’s two main environmental and Diaspora-led organizations in the past two years.

Unfortunately, neither has showed any serious interest although I hope that will now change. Even today, while such organizations build web sites, they remain unaware of the fact that blogs, and especially those based on platforms such as Wordpress, will reach a far larger audience by the very nature of their design than what they are currently developing and invariably leaving static.

Anyway, at time of writing, there are 51 entries on environmental-related issues here. Time does not allow for much more and it’s obvious that a specialist blog on the environment in Armenia would be a great idea.