June 5 - "One Earth Only": Exciting Facts About World Environment Day

World Environment Day on June 5th is the biggest international day dedicated to the environment. Led by UNEP and held annually, the event has grown into the largest global platform for environmental work, bringing together millions of people from around the world to take action to protect the planet.

Sweden is hosting World Environment Day 2022 and will also host Stockholm+50 on June 2-3. This event marks the 50th anniversary of the first United Nations Conference on the Human Environment, held in Stockholm in 1972. This put sustainable development on the global agenda and led to the launch of World Environment Day.

“Only One Earth” was the motto of the Stockholm conference. World Environment Day 2022 reinvigorates the slogan to emphasize that planet earth is still the only livable planet we have and to urge transformative action to restore balance between people and nature and a brighter future for all to accomplish.

Over 150 countries are participating and the UN will involve governments, businesses, civil society, schools, celebrities, cities and communities to raise awareness and organize environmental action.

World Environment Day is celebrated by millions of people around the world. We have #OnlyOneEarth and we need to focus on living sustainably in harmony with nature.

#OnlyOneEarth. Facts and figures on World Environment Day on June 5th

We use the equivalent of 1.6 Earths to sustain our current way of life and ecosystems cannot keep up with our demands.
To limit global warming to 1.5°C by the end of the century, we need to halve annual greenhouse gas emissions by 2030.
Investing in renewable energy can deliver high economic multipliers, has high potential to attract private investment and is an important step towards economy-wide decarbonisation.
The destruction of ecosystems affects the well-being of an estimated 3.2 billion people, or 40 percent of the world’s population.
Restoring 15 percent of converted land while halting further conversion of natural ecosystems can prevent 60 percent of expected species extinctions.
About a third of the world’s farmland has been degraded, about 87 percent of the world’s inland wetlands have disappeared, and a third of commercial fish species are being overfished.
Food systems are responsible for 80 percent of biodiversity loss, providing only 20 percent of calories.
Air pollution causes about 7 million premature deaths each year, one in nine of all deaths. Nine out of ten people breathe unclean air, making it the number one environmental health hazard of our time.
Only 57 percent of countries have a legal definition of air pollution. In 2019, 92 percent of people experienced air pollution levels that exceeded the World Health Organization’s safe guidelines.
The latest SDG monitoring cycle (SDG: Sustainable Development Goals address global challenges such as poverty, inequality, climate, environmental degradation, prosperity, and peace and justice) revealed that over 3 billion people are at risk because they don’t know enough about the health of surfaces – and groundwater resources know.
From 1950 to 2017, an estimated 9.2 billion tons of plastic were produced, of which 7 billion tons became waste.