What is World Environment Day?

Since 1974, the World Environment Day has been celebrating every year on the 5th of June. On this day, governments, citizens, and businesses have engaged in addressing environmental issues around the world. This day is an effort to make changes around the world as habits around the world have not been the best. This day has developed a platform that raises awareness and takes action on global issues; such as pollution and sustainability. Every year, there is a specific theme undertaken by the host country. Last year, the World Environment Day focused on biodiversity. Columbia hosted this day and they created the goal of protecting at least 30% of the planet’s land and ocean by 2030. In 2017, Mumbai hosted and the theme was “I’m with nature” capturing the idea that individuals need to adopt more environmentally friendly actions. Mumbai held 1800 events, including a tree-planting event.

You may ask what exactly is an ecosystem? It is the interaction between living organisms. These are your plants, animals, people with their surroundings. This can also include nature but also human-made systems such as cities or farms.

How does it change the environment?

World Environment Day has made a huge impact on the world. Humans are constantly damaging the environment from their habits and actions. We should not be proud of exploiting the planet’s ecosystem. Every 3 seconds the world loses enough forest to cover a football pitch – this is 7,140 square metres which is a significant amount. Over the last century, we have destroyed half of our wetlands.

World Environment Day is important, the mission is to revive billions of hectares of forests and farmlands, from mountains to the depth of the sea. If we all make an effort in changing the way we live, we can create a healthier ecosystem and enhance our livelihoods. We can even prevent climate change. If every individual does something positive every day, such like plant a tree, all this will help in the end and stop the collapse of biodiversity. Producers can produce more sustainably and governments can invest in repairing the earth. Positive change can happen and humans can build a greener cleaner future for our current and future generations.

#GenerationRestoration

The use of this hashtag allows for a wider community to be build and help alleviate the negative impacts on the environment.

This year Pakistan is the global host of World Environment Day. Pakistan plans to expand and restore forests across their country. Their campaign will restore forests and mangroves; they will also plant trees around schools, parks and around the community. To finance this they launched the ecosystem restoration fund. So this will support nature-based solutions to climate change while encouraging conservation.

By restoring the ecosystem, we can bring back animals and plants from the brink of extinction. The UN environment programme has a lot of information that may be helpful.

The World Environment Day website has many stories you may check out. Check out this article on the ‘Five things the world is saying about ecosystem restoration’ down below.

Five things the world is saying about ecosystem restoration