World Environment Day 2021
04 June 2021 – Across the globe, governments, communities and individuals honour to celebrate the United Nation’s World Environment Day, the most significant annual event for environmental action, and encourage in caring for the environment by inspiring, informing, and enabling nations and peoples to improve their quality of life without compromising that of future generations.
This year’s theme will focus on “Reimagine. Recreate. Restore.”, resetting humanity’s relationship with nature. The United Nation will also be launching the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration, a 10-year global push to prevent, halt and reverse ecosystem degradation.
Pakistan will be spearheading the event and showcasing its restoration initiatives, such as the Ten Billion Tree Tsunami Project, which aims to plant 10 billion trees by 2023. Pakistan, one of the countries most at risk from climate change, has also launched an Ecosystem Restoration Fund to support nature-based solutions to climate change.
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.
Inger Andersen, UNEP Executive Director
Intiatives in Southeast Asia
Malaysia
1. A living collection of rare plants patches forests in Malaysia: The Tropical Rainforest Conservation & Research Centre protects and manages a 500-hectare ex-situ conservation site. The reserve suffers from illegal logging, mining, and agricultural clearing, resulting in increasing rates of forest fragmentation. They collect seeds from rare, endangered, and threatened plant species, help them germinate, and reintroduce them into their native habitats to restore connectivity in this designated High Conservation Value Forest.
Indonesia
1. Seeding 100m trees to restore Borneo’s rainforests: The “100 million tree for Borneo” initiative resides in central Kalimantan, on the island of Borneo. Its strategy is to recruit new farmers each year to participate in the restoration of degraded forests by planting fast-growing tree species and cash crops in agroforestry systems.
2. Borneo Nature Foundation preventing peat fires in Indonesia: This initiative’s goal is to restore Sebangau National Park, Borneo’s largest lowland rainforest and home to the clouded leopard, sun-bear, and the world’s largest protected population of orangutans.
For more information about the events around the world, please visit the official website here.
