The Blue Marble: Next Generation image of South America from September 2004 at very high resolution (500 meters/pixel). Image courtesy of NASA, Reto Stöckli and Robert Simmon.

It’s World Environment Day on Friday!!

The United Nations General Assembly declared the 5th June each year as World Environment Day on the first day of the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment, also known as the Stockholm Conference, in 1972, which was the United Nations first major conference on environmental issues. The day is aimed at encouraging worldwide awareness, action to protect our environment, and promoting progress on the environmental dimensions of the Sustainable Development Goals. The United Nations consider it the ‘people’s day’ for doing something to take care of the Earth, whether that is local, national or global.

The first World Environment Day took place in 1974 on the theme of ‘Only One Earth’, and has been held annually ever since. After the UN Environment Programme hosted the day at its headquarters in Nairobi, Kenya, in 1987, it was agreed that the centre of the activities would be moved around the world with different countries hosting each year. This happened for the first time in 1988 when the day was hosted by Bangkok, Thailand with the theme of ‘When People Put the Environment First, Development Will Last’.

We are excited World Environment Day is being hosted in Colombia this year, in partnership with Germany. Colombia is a country we know well as we’re currently working on the Ecological Production Management Information System, (EcoProMIS) project there as part of the UK Space Agency’s International Partnership Programme. The project is working with farmers in the area and is run by Agricompas, supported by a number of Colombian partners and Pixalytics. You can read more about the project here.

The theme for 2020 is ‘Celebrate Biodiversity’. Biodiversity, or biological diversity, is the variability of living things that makes up life on Earth. It encompasses the 8 million species on the planet, from plants and animals to fungi and bacteria, and the ecosystems in which they live such as oceans, forests, mountain environments and coral reefs. Healthy ecosystems are fundamental to human existence, and we need to take care of them – something we’re not doing that well at! Ecosystems are in a delicate balance and one change can affect an entire life system.

With a 2 million square kilometre landmass, home to over 48 million people, Colombia is the fourth largest country in South America and the only country with coastlines on both the Pacific Ocean and the Caribbean Sea. Amazingly it supports ten per cent of the planet’s biodiversity with fifty-one thousand species and has the most diverse bird and orchard species in the world, and the second most diverse environment for plants, butterflies, freshwater fish and amphibians. There are several areas of high biological diversity in Andean ecosystems, together with part of the Amazon rainforest and the humid ecosystems of the Chocó biogeographical area.

With the current global pandemic, Colombia can’t host all the events it was hoping to this year. It has however put together a series of talks and events about the challenges of biodiversity with experts from all over the world. The schedule for this, on Friday, can be found here.

This isn’t the only way you can participate:

• You could start by taking the Biodiversity quiz and learn more about the planet and nature.

Once you’ve warmed up with that:

• Why not participate in one of the over one thousand registered events being held around the world this week – mostly virtually! The website has a list of all the registered events and details on how to get involved, you can also see a calendar schedule of events; or
• Have a look at the Practical Toolkit to see all the different ways that individuals, faith groups, businesses, cities, governments, schools & universities, youth groups and society can help the planet.

As the headlines for the event spell out, the foods we eat, the air we breathe, the water we drink and the climate that makes our planet habitable all come from nature.

To care for ourselves we must care for nature. It’s time to wake up. To take notice. To raise our voices.

This World Environment Day, it’s Time for Nature.