The World Environment Day event schedule is now complete. Below is the 2021 World Environment day live feed.
This World Environment Day, join #GenerationRestoration.
In the lead up to World Environment Day, we're featuring updates from United Nations System, from partners and from others helping to call attention to the fact that the future of humanity depends on action now.
Unless you are a keen gardener or a farmer, you probably don’t spend much time thinking about soil. But soil pollution is a serious problem as it can consume fertile soils, with implications for global food security and human health, making it harder to grow crops. Right now, the degradation of land and soils is affecting at least 3.2 billion people – 40 per cent of the world’s population.
As we prepare for the formal launch of the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration on World Environment Day on June 5, we need to consider the health of the planet’s soils and reflect on the joint actions we need to take to halt and reverse soil degradation.
The Global Assessment of Soil Pollution report, to be launched on June 4, was drawn up by scientists from across the world to raise awareness of the threats posed by soil pollution and how this is linked to other environmental pressures and land degradation. The report was produced as a joint effort by the Food and Agricultural Organization’s Global Soil Partnership with support from UNEP.
Join this virtual event -- Towards Zero Pollution: Launch of the Global Assessment of Soil Pollution Report -- to learn more about soil pollution.
When: June 4; 12:30 - 14:30 CEST
Register here.
Details here.
Find out more about Ecosystem Restoration here and play your own part by joining #GenerationRestoration here.
Check out what people across the planet are doing for World Environment Day here, and get involved by registering your own event.
On an island off Mauritius, local labourers are clearing 14 hectares of invasive species, planting local plants and then placing life-size dummies of seabirds on the ground to trick real birds flying overhead into thinking there are already bird populations on the island.
This unique project is part of efforts to restore ecosystems that have been damaged and degraded. Mauritius, once home to the dodo, has witnessed a steep decline in its treasured biodiversity because of development, invasive species, pollution, climate change, and other pressures.
The seabird project is part of a wider ecosystem restoration project being carried out on Ile aux Aigrettes by the Mauritian Wildlife Foundation, supported by UNEP.
“Seabirds… help fertilize the land by bringing important marine nutrients. Their presence helps plants and insect populations to grow, thereby helping the whole food chain,” explains Vikash Tatayah of the Mauritian Wildlife Foundation. “A high density of seabirds on islands are also important to coral reefs, which they fertilize, and they contribute to the health of fisheries. Birds are also a major tourist attraction.”
Read more about this inspirational project here. It is designed to help Mauritius achieve its targets under Sustainable Development Goal 14.2, Life Under Water.
The Mauritian project is exactly the kind of action that must be scaled up during the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration, a global push to revive natural spaces lost to development which launches formally on World Environment Day on June 5.
Check out the facts and figures on Ecosystem Restoration here.
Find out more with UNEP’s Ecosystem Restoration playbook, a practical guide to healing the planet.
Follow all the action ahead of World Environment Day here. Check out the official schedule and register your own event.
Find out more about the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration here and join #GenerationRestoration so you too can do your bit #ForNature.
Today’s youth are tomorrow’s leaders and have a critical role to play in resetting our relationship with nature and ensuring we tackle our triple planetary crises: the climate emergency, biodiversity loss and pollution and waste. We need to hear their voices.
Ahead of World Environment Day on June 5, UNEP and the UN Department of Global Communications are organising a virtual event and call to action under the theme Reimagine, Recreate, Restore.
The event will bring together youth from different sectors, media personalities, entrepreneurs, and civil society leaders to share their experiences and the individual actions they take in their daily lives to protect the planet. The livestream event will also feature interactive dialogues and social media moments.
When: 4 June; 6:00 – 7:15 p.m. EAT
Where: Live on UNEP YouTube
Find more event details here.
World Environment Day marks the formal launch of the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration -- a 10-year drive to halt and reverse the degradation of ecosystems worldwide.
Young people around the world have often taken leading roles in protecting the environment. Their ideas, perspectives, and solutions are addressing major global challenges and contributing to the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals.
Want to join in? Check out UNEP’s events page here for inspiration and then register your own event so that you too can be part of #GenerationRestoration.
Browse the official schedule of events hosted by UNEP and Decade Partners, featuring high level speakers, expert panels and other events taking place around the world here.
Plastic pollution is a threat to nature across the board, but especially to marine and riverine ecosystems. Some 8 million tonnes of plastic end up in the sea every year, sickening wildlife, clogging fishing nets and sometimes ending up on dinner plates. If this trend continues, the oceans could contain more plastic than fish by 2050, say researchers.
The UNEP CounterMEASURE team is using innovative technologies to uncover how plastic waste is entering river systems – and ultimately oceans – in Asia, particularly the Mekong and the Ganges. This knowledge can then be used to make targeted policy interventions.
Ahead of World Environment Day on June 5, this webinar -- Discovering Plastic Leakage Hotspots -- will highlight how citizen science and frontier technology is informing policy and helping beat plastic pollution in Southeast Asia. Such interventions will be critical as the world embarks on the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration, which launches officially on June 5.
What: Discovering Plastic Leakage Hotspots webinar
When: June 2; 10:00-13:00 (IndoChina Time)
For further details, including on the speakers, and to register, click here.
Check out this interactive article on plastic pollution for all the facts.
Or read this inspiring story about a ground-breaking scheme in Assam, India, that allows low-income families to use single-use plastic to pay for private schooling.
Read more about the Tide Turners Plastic Challenge, part of UNEP’s CleanSeas campaign.
Why not become part of #GenerationRestoration by joining the millions of people celebrating World Environment Day? Check out the official schedule of events here and then register your own event.
Seagrass, which evolved over 70 million years ago from terrestrial grass, is one of the most diverse and valuable marine ecosystems on the planet. It plays a crucial role in fighting climate change, ensuring food security, protecting coastlines, enriching biodiversity, controlling disease and filtering water.
As we prepare for the official launch of the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration on World Environment Day on June 5, projects to restore seagrass are gathering pace.
Read more here about this invaluable nature-based solution, which covers only 0.1 per cent of the ocean floor but stores around 18 per cent of oceanic carbon.
Seagrass zones are among a growing number of ecosystems, including forests, savannahs and mountains, under pressure from human development. Every year, the world loses enough trees to fill the Republic of Korea and since 1970, 30 per cent of natural freshwater ecosystems have disappeared.
But we can reverse these trends. Find out more with UNEP’s practical guide to ecosystem restoration here. Or explore these amazing landscapes virtually with UNEP’s Wild for Life virtual journeys.
The UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration is designed to draw together political support, scientific research and financial mobilization into a coordinated global movement that will massively scale up restoration to revive millions of hectares of terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems.
Become part of #GenerationRestoration here and keep up-to-date on everything going on around World Environment Day here.
Waste management plays a vital role in protecting and restoring our ecosystems but in many places, financing for waste management remains inadequate. The urban poor are the most affected as waste is all too often thrown onto the streets, dumped next to communities or openly burnt. This can lead to flooding, air and water pollution and diseases.
UN-Habitat is working to change this. In 2019, UN-Habitat supported UNEP in identifying 50 land-based point-source hotspots in Africa and South Asia, using available waste management data. Karachi was among the top three marine litter hotspots in the region.
This year, UN-Habitat launched the Waste Wise Cities Tool to help cities and local governments assess the environmental performance of municipal solid waste management systems, food waste generation and resource recovery systems in cities.
On May 27, an online event will examine the use of the Waste Wise Cities Tool survey in Karachi, as part of World Environment Day celebrations taking place in the run-up to June 5. The event is organised jointly by UNEP and the Ministry of Climate Change of Pakistan.
When: May 27; 6:00am - 9:00am (BST); 5:00 - 8:00 (UTC); 10:00 - 13:00 (Islamabad, Karachi, Tashkent)
Where: Online Zoom meeting
For full details, including speakers and dial-in instructions, click here.
As host of this year’s World Environment Day, Pakistan will highlight environmental issues and showcase its own initiatives such as the 10 Billion Tree Tsunami, one of the world’s most ambitious afforestation efforts. Read more about this campaign here.
To learn more about ecosystem restoration, check out UNEP’s Ecosystem Restoration Playbook here.
Join #GenerationRestoration by registering your own event for World Environment Day.
Check out the full schedule of official events for World Environment Day here.
In a world stretched thin for resources and under the threat of biodiversity loss and climate change, our lifestyle decisions are putting the planet at risk.
Sustainable living means understanding how our choices impact the world around us and finding ways for everyone to live better and more sustainably. UNEP has been developing tools to enable behaviour change and empower youth, like the Good Life Goals and Anatomy of Action, a list of core actions people can take to reduce their footprint on the planet.
On May 27, the Global Opportunities for Sustainable Development Goals (GO4SDGs) initiative will host the Youth Empowerment: Sustainable Lifestyles and Green Campuses webinar to explore these issues. GO4SDGs works with universities promoting innovation, green campuses and expanding youth opportunities for green jobs.
Join in to find out what changes you can make in your daily life.
When: 27 May; 13:30 - 14:30 (Bangkok time / GMT +7 hrs)
Where: Online
Register for the event here.
Join millions of people around the world as they prepare to celebrate World Environment Day on June 5. Check out the official schedule of events here and register your own event.
As we seek to tackle our triple planetary crises of climate change, nature loss and pollution, we know that nature-based solutions must be at the heart of our global responses.
Nature-based solutions (NbS) are actions taken to protect, sustainably manage and restore natural or modified ecosystems that address societal challenges effectively and adaptively, simultaneously providing human well-being and biodiversity benefits.
As we prepare for the formal launch of the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration on World Environment Day on June 5, the Geneva Environment Network and the International Union for Conservation of Nature have embarked on a one-year journey of discovery, where experts from all over the world and different sectors discuss how NbS are relevant to various debates ongoing in Geneva.
The next session of these Geneva Nature-Based Solutions Dialogues focuses on ecosystem restoration, looking at how the UN Decade offers an opportunity to employ NbS on the largest scale yet to safeguard food security and clean water and halt biodiversity loss and climate change. We all need to be involved and these dialogues will contribute to the global momentum for change by shedding light on the importance of ecosystem restoration for the future of our planet and societies.
When: June 7; 1500 CEST
Register here. Find out more here.
Be part of the global movement to celebrate World Environment Day on June 5 by checking out what’s going on and registering your own event here.
For the last 10 years, scientists have noted a spectacular return of wild animals in Europe and, today, they have decided to speed up this process, and extol a new approach in ecology: Rewilding.
The approach is explored in a documentary by Vincent Perazio and produced by ARTE France and the production company Bonne Pioche. The documentary will be shown as part of the Wednesdays for the Planet series of online screenings and virtual presentations organised by the Geneva Environment Network, with the support of UNEP.
This virtual presentation is organised within the framework of the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration and World Environment Day celebrations on June 5.
When: June 2; 1330 CEST
Where: A virtual presentation. Find out more here.
Everyone has a part to play in global efforts to restore our precious ecosystems and World Environment Day offers the perfect launchpad. Find out what others are doing to mark the day and register your own event here.
Check out UNEP’s practical Ecosystem Restoration Playbook here.
As we gear up for a critical decade #ForNature, we need to drastically increase funding for the nature-based solutions that will be key to tackling our triple planetary crises of climate change, biodiversity loss and pollution.
As countries and companies build back from the COVID-19 pandemic, we must take this unique opportunity to scale-up finance and investment in nature-based solutions so that we can restore degraded land and tackle the climate and biodiversity crises while creating jobs.
The State of Finance for Nature: Tripling Investments in Nature-Based Solutions by 2030 report, to be published on May 27, will present the results of a global analysis that tracks investment flows into nature-based solutions and identifies future investments needed to meet biodiversity, climate and land restoration targets.
The report was prepared by UNEP, the World Economic Forum (WEF) and the Economics of Land Degradation (ELD) Initiative, hosted by the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ).
When: May 27; 18:30-19:30 CET
Where: Launched as part of the WEF-hosted Climate Breakthroughs: The Road to COP26 and Beyond. Event details here.
World Environment Day on June 5 marks the official launch of the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration, a 10-year drive to halt and reverse the degradation of ecosystems worldwide. Find out more here and join in by becoming part of #GenerationRestoration.
A host of online and virtual events are already scheduled for World Environment Day. Stay up-to-date with the official event schedule here.
Check out the facts and figures on Ecosystem Restoration here.