June 5th of every year is celebrated as the World Environment Day since 1974 in more than 100 countries. This is a United Nations flagship day to promote and encourage the involvement of the government, businesses, celebrities and citizens to focus on environmental issues. The activities of World Environment Day 2020 will be hosted by Colombia in partnership with Germany.
The Theme of World Environment Day 2020 is “Biodiversity”.
Aim: The United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) declared it a #Time For Nature campaign. To create awareness of the effects of human demands on the biodiversity of nature.
Background:
i.On the first Day at Stockholm’s United Nations Conference on the Human Environment, after discussing the integration of human interactions and the environment, the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) designated June 5th as the World Environment Day in 1972.
ii.In 1987, it was decided that different countries should take turns as the centre for the events.
Importance of Biodiversity and impacts on Humans:
i.The Biodiversity is an intricate web of individual independent species that supports all forms of lives in the ecosystem and contributes in providing clean air and water, fertile soil, and an equable climate is known as Natural service or ecosystem service.
ii.The demands of humans have increased due to population growth which incited deforestation, intense agriculture and accelerated climatic change which caused loss to the biodiversity and collapse of the food and health system.
Restoration Initiative:
The United Nations Environment Programme(UNEP) with its partners launches the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration for 2021-2030, an initiative to restore human nature relationship based on the decisions made in the Convention on Biological Diversity.
Saving Biodiversity through Effective Waste Management:
i.Minister of Housing & Urban Affairs(MoHUA), Hardeep Singh Puri launched Advisories prepared by the Central Public Health and Environmental Engineering Organisation (CPHEEO) for the occasion.
ii.Key Advisories:
- Advisory on Material Recovery Facilities(MRFs) for Municipal Solid Waste(MSW)
- Advisory on Landfill Reclamation
- Consultative Document on On-site and Off-site Sewage Management Practices
Other Initiatives:
i.The Ministry released “Malasur – The Demon of Defeca”, a toolkit for communication Campaign on Faecal Sludge management to increase the risk perception of faecal sludge.
ii.Virtual workshop on the Draft Advisory for On-site & Off-site Sewage Management Practices in India was conducted.
About UNEP:
Executive Director– Inger Andersen
About Colombia:
President– Ivan Duque
Capital– Bogota
Currency– Colombian Peso
About Germany:
President –Frank Walter Steinmeier
Capital– Berlin
Currency– Euro
