June 5 – Only One Earth: Interesting facts about World Environment Day

World Environment Day on June 5th is the largest international day dedicated to the environment. Led by the United Nations Environment Program and held annually, the event has grown into the largest global platform for environmental action, bringing together millions of people from around the world to take action to protect the planet.

Sweden will host World Environment Day 2022 and will also host Stockholm+50 on 2-3 June. This event marks the 50th anniversary of the first United Nations Conference on the Human Environment, which was held in Stockholm in 1972. This put sustainable development on the global agenda and led to the launch of World Environment Day.

“Only one land” was the slogan of the Stockholm Conference. World Environment Day 2022 revitalizes the slogan to emphasize that planet Earth remains our only livable planet and to spur transformative work to restore balance between people and nature and a brighter future for all.

More than 150 countries are participating and the United Nations will engage governments, companies, civil society, schools, celebrities, cities and communities to raise awareness and organize environmental action.

Millions of people around the world celebrate World Environment Day. We have #OneEarth# and we need to focus on living sustainably in harmony with nature.

#OneEarth. Facts and figures about World Environment Day on June 5

• We use the equivalent of 1.6 Earths to sustain our current lifestyle and ecosystems can’t keep up with our demands.
• To limit global warming to 1.5°C by the end of the century, we need to halve greenhouse gas emissions by 2030.
• Investing in renewable energy can have high economic repercussions, has a high potential to attract private investment and is an important step towards economy-wide decarbonization.
• The destruction of ecosystems affects the well-being of an estimated 3.2 billion people, or 40 percent of the world’s population.
• Restoring 15 percent of converted land while halting further conversion of natural ecosystems could prevent 60 percent of expected species extinctions.
• About a third of the world’s agricultural land has been degraded, about 87 percent of the world’s inland wetlands have disappeared, and a third of commercial fish species are overfished.
• Diets are responsible for 80 percent of biodiversity loss, and provide only 20 percent of calories.
• Air pollution causes about 7 million premature deaths each year, one in nine. Nine out of ten people breathe unclean air, making it the number one environmental health risk of our time.
• Only 57 percent of countries have a legal definition of air pollution. In 2019, 92 percent of people experienced levels of air pollution that exceeded World Health Organization safe guidelines.
• The latest monitoring cycle of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs: Sustainable Development Goals that address global challenges such as poverty, inequality, climate, environmental degradation, prosperity, peace and justice) has revealed that more than 3 billion people are at risk because they do not know enough about the health of surfaces – and groundwater resources that know.
• From 1950 to 2017, an estimated 9.2 billion tons of plastic were produced, of which 7 billion tons became waste.

www.worldenvironmentday.global