The World Environment Day
The governments must
not only create
environmental
agreements, they
must strictly enforce them as well
The World Environment Day is being observed today throughout the globe. On December 15, 1972, the United Nations General Assembly designated June 5 as World Environment Day, to deepen public awareness of the need to preserve the environment. That date was chosen because it was the opening day of the United Nations conference on the human environment that led to the establishment of the United Nations Environment Programme.
The purpose of the Day is to give a human face to environmental issues and to empower people to become active agents of sustainable and equitable development. It is one of the principal vehicles through which the United Nations stimulates worldwide awareness of the environment and enhances political attention and action.
The environmental problems faced by the world today are painfully familiar. Rather these are getting worse day by day. Despite the Earth Summit, and despite success stories like the Montreal Protocol to protect the Ozone Layer, human beings continue to plunder the global environment. We are failing to protect resources and ecosystems. We are failing to invest enough in alternative technologies for betterment of environment.
Understanding of the environmental challenges we face is alarmingly low. It is imperative that environmental issues must be fundamentally repositioned in the policy-making arena. The environment must become better-integrated into mainstream economic policy of every country. The governments must not only create environmental agreements, they must strictly enforce them as well.
Our environment continues to face serious environmental degradation making situations unbearable to live in. Man is armed with both weapons of destruction and also those of construction and development. Unknowingly, mans weapons of reconstruction and development have negative consequential results affecting us in different ways. A refinery is producing fuel for all our needs but the same refinery is polluting our atmosphere, as well, making habitation unbearable. Vehicles carry us to any destination but same vehicles fill our atmosphere with carbon monoxide, which can equally endanger health.
Climate change represents a serious threat to every part of the globe, and it would be ridiculous to believe that this is just another issue being pushed by the developed countries down the throats of the developing world. It must be borne in our mind that living in a clean and better world will improve life for all of us, no matter where people live.
