Antonio Guterres addresses this Earth Day 2020 with ‘Deeper Environmental Emergency’
Earth Day 2020 will mark the 50th anniversary of this holiday. Typically, Earth Day is assigned a different theme or area of focus each year; this year’s theme is ‘Climate Action’.
Earth Day was a unified response to an environment in crisis — oil spills, smog, rivers so polluted they literally caught fire. On April 22, 1970, 20 million Americans — 10% of the U.S. population at the time — took to the streets, college campuses and hundreds of cities to protest environmental ignorance and demand a new way forward for our planet.
The first Earth Day in 1970 launched a wave of action, including the passage of landmark environmental laws in the United States. The Clean Air, Clean Water and Endangered Species Acts were created in response to the first Earth Day in 1970, as well as the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Many countries soon adopted similar laws.
Biodiversity changes affect ecosystem functioning and significant disruptions of ecosystems can result in life sustaining ecosystem goods and services. Specific linkages between health and biodiversity include impact in nutrition, health research or traditional medicine, new infectious diseases and influencing shifts in the distribution of plants, pathogens, animals, and even human settlements, most of them affected by climate change. And concerning this, UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres, released his remarks on ‘deeper environmental emergency’ to celebrate Earth Day.
Mr Guterres re-iterated his view that the coronavirus is the biggest challenge the world has faced since the Second World War.
But as the world commemorates the 50th anniversary of Earth Day, the planet's "unfolding environmental crisis is an even deeper emergency", "Biodiversity is in steep decline, Climate disruption is approaching a point of no return,” Mr Guterres stated.
"We must act decisively to protect our planet from both the coronavirus and the existential threat of climate disruption," he says.
Most years, Earth Day events range from river clean ups to invasive removals. With social distancing in place for many of us this April, Earth Day has gone digital. Virtual events, like environmental lectures and films, will take place on Earth Day.
The first Earth Day is credited with launching the modern environmental movement, and is now recognized as the planet’s largest civic event.
