Latest news and updates on World Environment Day 2024
Latest news and updates on World Environment Day 2024
 
Soil is degrading, droughts are increasing and once fertile land is turning into desert. But there are glimmers of hope.
In the high Andes of Latin America, hundreds of communities are uniting across five countries to secure water sources and mitigate climate change. Learn how they do it – and why an old tree is a secret weapon in their fight.
Acción Andina has been recognized as a World Restoration Flagship under the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration. These initiatives represent Earth’s frontiers of hope. To learn more about other restoration initiatives, visit UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration.
Do you know how many people around the world are affected by droughts each year? Do you know what is the leading cause of land degradation? Or what is Earth’s most biodiverse habitat?
This year’s World Environment Day, held on 5 June, focuses on land restoration, desertification and drought resilience. Ahead of World Environment Day, find out how much you know about the biggest crises facing our ecosystems. Take the World Environment Day quiz.
Everybody alive now is part of a generation that is the first to witness the devastating effects of environmental degradation.
Drought, land degradation and desertification have the potential to destroy life on planet earth. As the campaign for World Environment Day starts, it is a good opportunity to get involved.
The message is clear. Ecosystems restoration at mass scale is needed to tackle climate change, save species from extinction and secure our future.
For this year’s World Environment Day, lend Earth a helping hand by becoming #GenerationRestoration. Check out “We Are #GenerationRestoration: A Practical Guide” to find out how.
“This year, World Environment Day will direct the world’s gaze to three perilous, though often-overlooked, challenges: land degradation, desertification and drought,” said Elizabeth Mrema, UN Envrionment Programme Deputy Executive Director. She spoke at the campaign launch for this year’s World Environment Day (WED) in Riyadh, capital of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. “Our priority now must be on restoring ecosystems – on replanting our forests, on rewetting our marshes, on reviving our soils,” Mrema added.
The 2024 World Environment Day (WED) campaign will launch on 28 April in Riyadh, capital of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. This year, the Kingdom is hosting WED with a focus on land restoration, desertification and drought resilience.
One of the most effective ways to restore degraded land, halt desertification and build drought resilience is through ecosystem restoration. And the beauty of restoration is that it can happen at any scale. This means everyone has a role to play.
As the campaign kicks off, get involved in this year’s WED. Register your restoration event or activity and receive a certificate of participation.
Every second, an equivalent of four football fields of healthy land becomes degraded, adding up to 100 million hectares every year.
Engaging present and future generations is more important than ever to halt and reverse these alarming trends and meet global commitments to restore 1 billion hectares of degraded land by 2030.
The theme chosen for this year's Desertification and Drought Day – United for Land: Our Legacy. Our Future – seeks to mobilize society in support of sustainable land stewardship. Taking place on June 17, also the 30th anniversary of the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) – the sole legally binding international treaty on land management and drought; one of the three Rio Conventions alongside climate change and biodiversity.
Desertification is one of the biggest environmental threats of our time. It refers to land drying up due to reduced rainfall, the expansion of agriculture, poor irrigation practices, deforestation and overgrazing.
Climate change is exacerbating desertification: right now, around 2 billion people live on drylands vulnerable to desertification, which could displace an estimated 50 million people by 2030.
If people cannot grow food, they will need to move to an area where they can, increasing the risk of desertification, and having negative effects on landscapes, wildlife and human health.
Today, 2.4 billion people live in water-stressed countries, defined as nations that withdraw 25 per cent or more of their renewable freshwater resources to meet water demand.
Hard hit regions include Southern and Central Asia, and North Africa, where the situation is considered critical. Even countries with highly developed infrastructure, like the United States, are seeing water levels drop to record lows.
Along with climate change, the crisis is being fed by unchecked urbanization, rapid population growth, pollution and land development. Water shortfalls already affect everything from food security to biodiversity and in the coming years, they are poised to become more common.
Mauritania’s battle against encroaching desertification, which has damaged ecosystems and endangered species, has received a timely boost with the news that 200,000 hectares will be turned into a protected area to support biodiversity in the country.
The project, implemented by UNEP and supported by the Global Environment Facility, will create a new protected area in the district of Adrar, a former crossroads for medieval salt and date traders, known for its striking desert landscapes and UNESCO-listed fortified towns of Chinguetti and Oudane.
To tackle the impacts of climate change and biodiversity loss, the countries of Africa’s Sahel region are mounting an epic response: a “wall” of restored forests and lands stretching more than 8,000 kilometers across the continent.
The Great Green Wall is a spectacular initiative designed to help people and nature cope with the growing impact of the climate emergency and the degradation of vital ecosystems, and to keep the Sahara Desert from spreading deeper into one of the world’s poorest regions.