World Environment Day: Pak stressed to highlight need of holistic nature conservation efforts

News Desk

ISLAMABAD:  Pakistan will mark World Environment Day 2022 like the rest of the world to highlight the need for holistic nature conservation efforts and support vulnerable communities affected in developing countries due to climate change.

The theme for this year’s World Environment Day (WED 2022) is ‘Only one Earth’, where the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) on its website stated: “In the universe are billions of galaxies, in our galaxy are billions of planets, but there is #OnlyOneEarth.

Let’s take care of it.  The WED 2021 was hosted by Pakistan in Islamabad in partnership with the UNEP, under the theme “Ecosystem Restoration” and focused on resetting the relationship of humans with nature.

The day-long celebrations were live-streamed all over the world through social media and were watched by millions around the globe. UNEP Executive Director Inger Anderson wrote a letter to then Prime Minister Imran Khan and mentioned that Pakistan’s WED live telecast was watched by over 170 million people all over the world, and 42,000 articles were published so far on WED celebrations in 37 languages around 174 countries.

Anderson underscored in her letter that over 160 million people had watched and participated in the social media trends of #WorldEnvironmentDay, whereas the UNEP webpage was live-streamed by 1.5 mil masses.

She termed the WED 2021 hosted by Pakistan as the most successful celebration ever made, which was held under strict Covid-19 protocols.

The planet Earth is facing multifaceted challenges and emergencies, due to rapid environmental degradation, where the atmosphere is heating up too quickly for the people and nature to adapt. According to the scientists, due to rapidly changing temperature, habitat loss and other challenges were estimated to threaten one million species with extinction and the ravaging pollution continued to poison air, land and water resources.

The UNEP, under the informed guidance of science-based data from experts, provided a solution that called to transform the economies and societies to make them inclusive, fair and more connected with nature.

“We must shift from harming the planet to healing it. The good news is the solutions and the technologies exist and are increasingly affordable”, it said. #OnlyOneEarth is the campaign for World Environment Day 2022. It calls for collective and transformative action on a global scale to celebrate, protect and restore the planet.  Meanwhile, UNEP tweeted, “Join us to celebrate #WorldEnvironmentDay tomorrow! There is #OnlyOneEarth.

We can all contribute to overcoming the planetary crisis of #ClimateChange, biodiversity loss, and pollution. Tell us what you are doing to protect and restore our planet.

There will be a wide range of activities nationwide that include symposiums, webinars, seminars, conferences, plantation, and cleanup drives at various locations by students, academia, civil society and public sector organizations to observe WED 2022 with great fervor.