World Environment Day is celebrated each year on 5th June. The United Nations established in 1972 to mark the opening of the Stockholm Conference on Human Environment.
World Environment Day (WED) is hosted every year by a different city and celebrated with an international exhibition through the week of June 5.
World Environment Day is used by the United Nations to encourage awareness of the environment and to garner political attention and public action. The first WED held at Stockholm was the first time political, social and economic problems of the global environment were discussed at great length in view of taking some definitive action.
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World Environment Day is celebrated in many ways. Street rallies, parades, street plays create awareness about world environment.
In many cities contests like poster contests, essay contests, poetry contests, slogan contests and debates are held to celebrate this event further. The main objective always is to get the people involved with the environment.
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Some cities have art exhibitions with art made from recycled materials. Some get celebrities to endorse the campaign. Banners are put all across the street promoting the message of World Environment Day.
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Tree planting drives are also held in some cities. Awards are given out to those neighborhoods that have made a significant effort to take care of the environment.
Broadcast of public service announcements on TV and radio help to renew people’s efforts to saving the environment. Conferences are held to educate people about the efforts that can be made to preserve the environment.
The WED’s agenda is to give importance to environmental issues. It hopes to empower people to become active agents promoting the cause of the environment.
Change can happen only if it is affected at the community level; hence programs are held on World Environment Day that creates community consciousness.
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Heads of Government and Ministers of Environment deliver speeches’ advising the people of what has already been achieved and what still needs to be achieved. Some even go a step further and set up permanent government bodies that will look specifically into environmental issues.
Each World Environment Day has a special topic that related to the environment that it addresses. The topic for World Environment Day for 2007 was “Melting Ice – a Hot Topic?” It discussed the affects the climate change was having on the polar ecosystems and communities and the resulting global impacts of these changes.
The topic for WED 2006 was Deserts and Desertification and the slogan was “Don’t desert dry lands” which accentuated the relevance of protecting the dry lands which are home to one third of the worlds people, those that are more defenseless.
World Environment Day is a day for us to inspect the state of our environment. It calls for us to stop in our tracks one day in the year and examine our surroundings. It asks us to pledge, in a small way at least, to do something for the environment.
The young and the old from all strata can contribute to the saving of the environment. Not everyone needs to make hefty contributions to world environment organizations. The little things, the ones that really matter are things like recycling our waste, using paper and products made of wood discriminately and these can be done by anybody and everybody.
Children can also contribute to this cause by not wasting water, by switching off the lights and fans in the house when not in use. There is something each of us can do to preserve the environment. So let us all pledge to do something, at least one thing, before the next World Environment Day.