Blue Marble image of the Earth taken by the crew of Apollo 17 on Dec. 7 1972.
Image Credit: NASA
We’re focusing on the celebration of World Environment Day, and announcement of Earth Overshoot Day, which are both occurring Wednesday, 5th June.
World Environment Day
World Environment Day is celebrated on the 5th June every year. It aims to bring together people around the world to protect and restore the Earth creating a more sustainable world.
It was created at the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment, held between 5th & 16th June 1972 in Stockholm, Sweden. At the conference, the United Nations General Assembly designated the opening day as World Environment Day. The first World Environment Day was formally celebrated in 1973 with the theme ‘Only One Earth.’
The 1972 Stockholm conference was an important touchpoint in the global environment movement as the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) was also created as a result of this event. UNEP leads the World Environment Day programme, alongside projects to support sustainable development including the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.
Pixalytics is also proud to be working with UNEP on a project to support monitoring plastic in the ocean, through the Carl von Ossietzky University of Oldenburg in Germany, and in 2023 World Environment Day focused on Solutions to Plastic Pollution. Dr Samantha Lavender from Pixalytics is presenting on this work at the Open Geospatial Consortium’s Innovation Days Europe: Climate and Disaster Resilience, One Health, and Data Spaces taking place on the 1st and 2nd July 2024 in Tartu, Estonia.
In 2024, World Environment Day focuses on land restoration, halting desertification and building drought resilience, with the theme ‘Our land. Our future. We are #GenerationRestoration.’, and is being hosted by Saudi Arabia this year.
This year’s theme is critical as up to 40 per cent of the world’s land is already degraded, it’s estimated that 3.2 billion people are negatively impacted by desertification, and more than seventy-five percent of the world’s population is expected to be impacted by drought by 2050. Things need to change.
Getting Involved in World Environment Day
There are events happening all over the world, with currently over one thousand five hundred events registered. The website has a map of all the different events that are taking place, so there could be something happening in your local area! Looking for Pixalytics, there are two events happening nearby:
- Nature Walk in the spectacular Cornish countryside at Truro in Cornwall, and
- A free screening of Word Forest’s documentary “Trees Are The Key”, narrated by Kate Winslet is taking place in Exmouth. This is followed by a Q&A with Tracey and Simon West from Word Forest, together with Exmouth’s Climate Officer.
If there are no events close to you, there is a practical guide you can download to show how you governments, localities, business, schools, and individuals can get involved in ecosystem restoration. At Pixalytics we’re passionate about the environment and we’ll be looking through the guide to see if there’s more we can do.
Why don’t you have a look and see how you can get involved in World Environment Day?
Earth Overshoot Day
There is a second interesting environmental event taking place on June 5th, and it will also mark the announcement of 2024’s Earth Overshoot Day.
Created by the Global Footprint Network in 2006, the Earth Overshoot Day marks the time in the year when are demand for ecological resources and services in a given year exceeds what the planet can regenerate in that entire year. Ideally, you would want that date to be 31st December, or even not be achieved, however in 2023 Earth Overshoot Day was August 2nd.
This means we use up all the resources the planet can create in 58.63% of the year, meaning for the rest of the year we are further depleting the planet by using resource reserves and accumulating carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. This is obviously not a sustainable position for the long term, and we need to look to #MoveTheDate.
The website’s Power of Possibility page has lots of potential solutions for five categories: healthy planet, cities, energy, food, and population – demonstrating how everyone could contribute to moving the date backwards.
The date for Earth Overshoot Day 2024 will be announced on June 5, World Environment Day, and it will be interesting to see what has happened this year!
