Last Wednesday, June 5, was the 52nd celebration of World Environment Day (WED). This event has been held annually since 1973 and is the biggest international day for the environment. It was started in 1972 by the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) to mark the opening of the Stockholm Conference on the Human Environment. It was also on June 5 that the UNGA created the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), the UN’s agency in charge of environmental affairs, who leads the yearly WED celebration.
In the Philippines, June is declared environment month by virtue of Proclamation No. 237 signed by President Corazon C. Aquino in 1988. The Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) itself was organized into what it is today on June 10, 1987.
The theme for this year’s WED is land restoration, desertification and drought resilience. Land restoration is a key pillar of the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration (2021-2030), a rallying call for the protection and revival of ecosystems all around the world, which is critical to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals. The 2024 WED will be hosted by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, a nation facing degradation, desertification and drought itself.
More than 2 billion hectares of the world’s land is degraded, affecting more than 3 billion people. Land restoration can reverse the creeping tide of land degradation, drought and desertification. Restoration boosts livelihoods, lowers poverty and builds resilience to extreme weather. Restoration increases carbon storage and slows climate change. Restoring just 15 per cent of land and halting further conversion could avoid up to 60 per cent of expected species extinctions.
The UNEP listed several ways to restore land, halt desertification and combat drought. One of them is to make agriculture sustainable. This can be done by developing climate-resilient crops, harnessing indigenous knowledge to develop sustainable farming methods and managing the use of pesticides and fertilizers to avoid harming soil health.
Another way to restore land is to keep soil healthy and productive through organic and soil-friendly farming. Farming practices like zero-tillage can help. This is a technique that involves cultivating crops without disturbing the soil through tillage, to maintain organic soil cover. Compost and organic materials could be added to soil to improve its fertility. Irrigation techniques, such as drip irrigation or mulching, could be used to help maintain soil moisture levels and prevent drought stress. Individuals could make compost from leftover scraps of fruit and vegetables for use in their gardens and balcony plant pots.
Protecting pollinators is also one of the ways to keep land productive. Three out of four crops producing fruit and seeds depend on pollinators such as bees, bats, birds, insects, butterflies and beetles. Despite their importance, all pollinators are in serious decline, bees especially due to air pollution, pesticides and fertilizers. We can protect pollinators by avoiding the use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides, and conserving meadows, forests and wetlands where pollinators thrive.
In Africa, there is an ambitious project called the Great Green Wall (GGW) which aims to restore 100 million hectares of currently degraded land. The project was launched in 2007 by the African Union and it stretches 8,000km across Africa.
Happy Word Environment Day!