Melting ice in focus on World Environment Day

OSLO (AFP) - The melting of the planet's ice due to climate change will be the central theme of World Environment Day, celebrated annually on June 5 and this year hosted by the Arctic town of Tromsoe in Norway.

Melting ice offers some of the clearest evidence of global warming, and this year's choice of host city was no coincidence, with the picturesque Norwegian town nestled in the Arctic, a region which is heating up twice as fast as the rest of the planet and where the effects are already visible.

"The Arctic and Antarctica may be the Earth's climate early warning system -- feeling the heat first -- but we know it does not end there," said the head of the United Nations Environment Program, Achim Steiner.