Earth Hour 2010 will be held on March 27 at 8.30pm (local time for every country, Bulgaria included) and is a global call to action to every individual, business and every community throughout the world to save energy and help prevent the deterioration of the global climate.

Bulgaria will participate for the third time in the WWF initiative.

People around the world will switch off their lights and power appliances for one hour, the action being mainly symbolical, the WWF said in a media statement on its website on March 1 2010.

The idea behind it is for people to gather, to spend some time with friends in "peace and quiet", and have time to reflect on "themselves and their lives".

Earth Hour has contributed greatly to raise awareness of climate change issues internationally. Of course, there is more to it than switching off lights for one hour once a year. It is about creating a sense of responsibility and care and it is about giving people a voice on the future of the plane they inhabit; "of working together to create a sustainable low carbon future for our planet", the statement said.

The idea for Earth Hour originated in 2007 in Sydney, Australia, when 2.2 million homes and businesses turned their lights off for one hour to make their stand against climate change.

The Australian initiative proved highly popular around the world and a year later Earth Hour had become a global sustainability movement with more than 50 million people across 35 countries joining in.

In major cities around the world, landmarks such as the Sydney Harbour Bridge, The Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, and Rome’s Colosseum, among many others, stood in darkness, "as symbols of hope for a cause that grows more urgent by the hour".