World Environment Day is one of the significant and biggest events celebrated every year on 5th June throughout the world. This day is being celebrated globally since 1974, engaging governments, people and the stakeholders worldwide in an effort to address the environmental issues. It is also called “People’s Day”. Every year the World Environment Day is celebrated around a particular theme and slogan with an alternate host country. If we look at the past trends then, the theme for World Environment Day 2020 was “Time for Nature” and was hosted by Colombia ; In 2019, it was “Beat Air Pollution” and was hosted by China; In 2018 it was “Beat Plastic Pollution” and was hosted by India; In 2017 it was “Connecting People to Nature – in the city and on the land, from the poles to the equator” and was hosted by Canada; and in 2016 the theme was “Go wild for life” and was hosted by Angola.
Now this year, the theme of World Environment Day 2021 is “Ecosystem Restoration” and the global host country will be Pakistan. According to the UNEP, the theme “Ecosystem Restoration” aims to forestall, halt and reverse the degradation of ecosystems on every continent and in every ocean. Ecosystem restoration for people, nature and climate means, healing nature and reversing the damage caused by humans. It also means assisting in the recuperation of ecosystems that have been debased, degraded or obliterated, as well as conserving the ecosystems that are still intact.
This Restoration can happen in many ways – for instance through effectively planting or by removing pressures so that nature can recover on its own. The global environmental body says, this will help in tackling poverty and combat climate change and taking the theme forward will be successful only if there is people’s participation, according to the UNEP. The participation can take in various forms like planting trees, greening cities, tidying up water bodies, spreading awareness through various programs and restoring the damaged small ecosystems. Everybody living on this planet, can voice for this campaign via social media by using the hashtag #GenerationRestoration.
An interesting fact here is that United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) asked Jordan Sanchez, a physics student at Harvard University, to produce a poem to mark World Environment Day 2021 and she penned down a spoken word piece titled, “Reimagine, Recreate, Restore!” which is a powerful call to action, reminding listeners that we must stop plundering and start protecting the planet’s resources. This “Reimagine, Recreate, Restore” is now the global slogan for World Environment day 2021.
To further amplify the concern, the United Nations General Assembly has declared the decade 2021-2030 as the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration, a global mission to revive billions of hectares, from forests to farmlands, from the top of mountains to the depth of the sea. This is a ”10-year push to halt and reverse the decline of the natural world. The year 2030, which is also the deadline for the Sustainable Development Goals and the timeline scientists have identified as the last chance to prevent catastrophic climate change. Led by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations together with the support of partners, the UN Decade is building a strong, broad-based global movement to ramp up restoration and put the world on track for a sustainable future. (Geneva Environment Network). That will include building political momentum for restoration as well as thousands of initiatives on the ground. So this World Environment Day will also kick off the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration (2021-2030).
This initiative was much needed because, for too long, we have been exploiting and annihilating our planet’s ecosystems. Every three seconds, the world loses enough forest to cover a football pitch and over the last century we have destroyed half of our wetlands. As much as 50 per cent of our coral reefs have already been lost and up to 90 per cent of coral reefs could be lost by 2050, even if global warming is restricted to an increase of 1.5°C. The UNEP (United Nations Environment Programme) report, titled “State of Finance for Nature” posited that public and private actors will need to scale up their annual investments by at least four times to meet future climate, biodiversity, and land degradation targets. By 2050, a total investment of nature needs will amount to USD 8.1 trillion, while annual investment should reach USD 536 billion annually by 2050.(UNEP Report 2021) . So the WED 2021 theme is very relevant in present times as only with healthy ecosystems , we can save our resources enhance people’s livelihoods, counteract climate change, forestall wastage of finances and stop the collapse of biodiversity. Above all, this World Environment Day offers a global platform for inspiring positive change. It pushes for individuals to think about the way they consume; for businesses to develop greener models; for farmers and manufacturers to produce more sustainably; for governments to invest in repairing the environment; for educators to inspire students to take action; and for youth to build a greener future.
Last but not least, the emergence of COVID-19 has reminded us just how disastrous the consequences of ecosystem loss can be. It has revealed, how the shrinking of natural habitat for animals, can create ideal conditions for disease causing microbes. Since the pandemic disrupted normal lives, the most important thing that will perhaps have an exceptionally expansive impact is the breakdown in the “relationship between human systems and natural systems.” So echoing our voice with the message from UNEP, This is our moment. We cannot turn back time. But we can grow trees, green our cities, rewild our gardens, change our diets and clean up rivers and coasts. We are the generation that can make peace with nature. Let’s get active, not anxious. Let’s be bold, not timid. Let’s practice the 3 R’s, Reimagine, Recreate and Restore to Join #GenerationRestoration.
The writer is a Science Teacher in J&K School Education Department and can be reached at irfanbashircuk@gmail.com