World Environment Day was established by the United Nations (UN) in its resolution (A/RES/2994 (XXVII)1 of 15 December 1977. It has been celebrated since 1974 on 5 June each year, the date on which the Stockholm Conference began in 1972, whose central theme was the Environment, and two days after Environment Day the UN General Assembly also approved the creation of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP). It called on “Governments and the organizations of the United Nations system to undertake on this day, each year, global activities that reaffirm their concern for the protection and improvement of the environment, with a view to enhancing awareness of environmental problems and to pursue the resolve expressed at the Conference”.
Since the first observance in 1974, World Environment Day has helped UNEP to raise awareness and create political pressure to address growing concerns such as ozone depletion, toxic chemical management, desertification and global warming. The Day has become a major global platform for action on environmental issues. Over the years, millions of people have participated to promote change in our consumption habits, as well as in national and international policies.
This year 2020 the theme for World Environment Day is biodiversity. Recent events, such as the unprecedented forest fires in Brazil, California and Australia, the locust invasion in the Horn of Africa and now the COVID-19 pandemic, demonstrate the inextricable link between humans and the webs of life in which we live.
From ECIJA, we would like to recall that first great conference on the environment in 1972, known as the Stockholm Conference, preparing this report from each local office where we have a presence (13) in Europe, Latin America and Asia to provide a broad perspective on the environment, focusing on all those great challenges that modern society must take on, not only in protecting biodiversity, but also and especially in matters of climate change and the circular economy.
These new challenges are marked, on the one hand, by the Paris Agreement of 2015 (21st Conference of the Parties to the UNFCCC -COP21-), by which the signatories committed themselves to reducing greenhouse gas emissions as soon as possible with the aim of maintaining the increase in global temperature “well below 2ºC with respect to pre-industrial levels”.
On the other hand, they are marked by the United Nations Agenda 2030 for sustainable development of 25 September 2015. This Agenda contains the 17 Sustainable Development Goals to which countries must aspire: 1. eradication of poverty, 2. fight against hunger, 3. good health, 4. quality education, 5. gender equality, 6. drinking water and sanitation, 7. renewable energy, 8. – decent work and economic growth, 9. industry, innovation and infrastructure, 10. reduction of inequality, 11. sustainable cities, 12. responsible consumption, 13. climate action, 14.