This year, there is just one word for what we want to make World Environment Day: epic. The aim is for celebrations to be bigger and better than ever and to call on people to show their love and affection for our shared natural world.
About World Environment Day
World Environment Day is the United Nations’ flagship day for encouraging worldwide awareness and action for the environment. Over the years, it has grown to be one of the largest global platforms for public outreach celebrated by over a million people in well over 100 countries.
It is the ‘People’s Day’ for doing something positive for the environment. Its aim is to harness individual actions and transform them into a collective power that has a legacy of real and lasting impact on the planet. From Bahrain to Bangkok,
the day is celebrated in countless ways with everything from beach clean-ups and tree planting to petitions and photo competitions, with thousands of children getting involved through their schools. The beauty of the day is in this diversity. It’s when people across the world collectively act, care, and show their love for the planet.
Why celebrate World Environment Day?
This year we want to see if we can beat the highest number of activities celebrating the day with over 4,000 events taking place, over 20 million people hearing about the day online, and over 1.5 million people getting involved. So, here are three reasons why you should celebrate World Environment Day:
Inform: It’s a great moment to demonstrate what your business/organization is doing to act in support of the environment.
Inspire: It’s a way to inspire staff within your organization and partners/suppliers about how to get involved and be more environmentally friendly at work and at home.
Have Impact: For businesses and organizations, World Environment Day is a great moment to reflect on the progress that has been made and what more could be done to further the environmental objectives of the organization/business.
2017 Host Country and Theme
Hosted by Canada, this year’s World Environment Day has the theme Connecting People to Nature, and the slogan, “I’m With Nature.” The idea that underpins this is that in our modern world, few of us take enough time away from our daily lives to appreciate and engage with our magnificent natural world.
By celebrating World Environment Day surrounded by this beauty, we can rediscover the importance of caring for the environment so that it can care for us. With this in mind, Canada will ask its citizens to celebrate the day in a number of amazing ways:
Find your nature: Canada is issuing passes giving anyone free entry to all its National Parks for the whole of 2017.
Get adventurous: Canada is inviting families and school children to get together in parks to record as many different forms of wildlife as possible as part of a “Nature Blitz”.
Learn to love the natural world: Learn to love the natural world: Schools across the country will prioritize the environment in their lessons to deepen their students’ understanding of why nature is so important to human well-being.
We hope that you will participate in World Environment Day, and will spread the word that our world needs our help. How are you participating? Share what you’re doing using the hashtags #WorldEnvironmentDay and #WithNature and let the world know that we all make a difference when it comes to the environment!
Courtesy of World Environment Day. For more info, please visit https://worldenvironmentday.global/en.