I remember when I was a kid and the only awareness day I was aware of involved batter, a frying pan, lemons and sugar. These days, you can’t carve a quiet route through 7 days without bumping into an important subject someone believes you should know more about.
To be fair, awareness days are a brilliant way for non-profit organisations like ours to shove a big stick in the sand every year to draw attention to the important work they’re doing and the achievements they’re making. The hope being if that news reaches new eyes, it’ll bring more people to the party. This year, we did just that and launched our inaugural Trees Are The Key Awareness Week – click here to dive into our top tips and be sure to catch my tree poem!
World Environment Day is a United Nations initiative that has encouraged people to be better environmentalists since Charles Aznavour was No: 1 in the charts with ‘She’ back in 1974. Its primary goal: raising awareness in over 143 countries of the action necessary to protect the environment by educating people about marine pollution, human overpopulation, global warming, sustainable consumption and wildlife crime. Every year, they pick a theme and this year it’s Reimagine. Recreate. Restore. Today, the UN Decade of Ecosystem Restoration will also be launched. The host country for this year’s activity is Pakistan but there will be events occurring to celebrate it all over the globe.
Their Team are set to broadcast a Virtual Launch Gala which will welcome in the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration, a ten-year global push to prevent, halt and reverse ecosystem degradation. You’ll be able to listen to inspirational messages from world leaders, activists, celebrities and watch musical performances.
There has never been a more urgent time to switch your thoughts to ways you can preserve and protect our planet. The human race, all the creatures on the Earth and the natural capital that exists upon it are affected by our choices – please make the right ones.
As the world slowly emerges from the devastation of our shared health crisis, there is increasing recognition that healing from the pandemic is linked to healing our planet too. The folks at World Environment Day want to reset humanity’s relationship with Mother Nature and they need all of us to listen and participate in the best way we can.
“It’s easy to lose hope when we think of the sheer magnitude of the challenges we face and the avalanche of bad news that we wake up to every morning,” says Inger Andersen, Executive Director of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP). “But just as we caused the climate crisis, the biodiversity crisis and the pollution crisis, we can reverse the damage that we’ve done; we can be the first generation to reimagine, to recreate and to restore nature to kickstart action for a better world.”
The Team at The Word Forest Organisation are proud to stand up and be counted on World Environment Day and we urge you to join us! Oh, by the way, we’ve a small piece in The Times magazine today to celebrate the event too.
You can be part of the solution by raising awareness of the critical issues on the table for urgent discussion. If we don’t spread the education en masse and successfully enough, the consequences don’t bear thinking about. So come on, join conversations taking place right across the world from today and be a better environmentalist! Share your top tips to Reimagine, Recreate and Restore balance in our world. Take to social media to spread the good green word and proudly use the hashtags #GenerationRestoration and #WorldEnvironmentDay.
We’ll be tuning in at 10am by clicking the video link below but don’t worry if you miss it, you can click on it any time thereafter and you’ll be able to catch up.
Tracey West and The Team
