Earth Day was founded in 1970 by US Senator Gaylord Nelson as a day meant to spread education and awareness about environmental issues. While it is not a national holiday (even though it should be), April 22nd each year marks the anniversary of the birth of the modern environmental movement. It has been estimated that Earth Day is celebrated by over a billion people worldwide, making it the most widely celebrated civic event in the world.
Many important environmental events have happened since the inception of Earth Day, including the signing of the Paris Agreement, the formation of the Environmental Protection Agency and the implementation of the Clear Air Act, Clean Water Act and Endangered Species Act, to name a few.
Earth Day’s objectives are also closely aligned with many of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals, like goals 6, 7, 11, 12, 13, 14, and 15. Those goals examine clean water, clean energy, sustainable communities, responsible consumption, climate action, protecting bodies of water, and taking care of everything on land—all of which align perfectly with the purpose and point of Earth Day.
Source: https://www.kendrion.com/en/about-kendrion/sustainability/sustainable-development-goals-sdgs
Last year, the Earth Day Network, which is the world’s largest network comprised of members from 192 countries, announced that the theme of Earth Day 2021 would be “Restore Our Earth”. This theme is based on the emerging concept that rejects the idea that our only options to save the planet are to mitigate or adapt to the impacts of climate change and other environmental damage.
Scientists, non-governmental organizations, business, and governments worldwide are now looking at natural system processes and emerging green technologies to restore the world’s ecosystems and forests, conserve and rebuild soils, improve farming practices, restore wildlife populations and rid the world’s oceans of plastics.
While the world waits for global political and business leaders to take decisive action to reduce carbon emissions, natural processes including reforestation and soil conservation can store massive amounts of carbon while restoring biodiversity, clean water and air and re-balancing ecological systems. Restoration is therefore pragmatic and necessary to reduce climate change.
Restoration also brings hope, which is crucial in the current context of COVID-19. The impact of the pandemic have illustrated with painful clarity that the planet faces two crises which are connected: global environmental degradation and its connection to our health. Deforestation, wildlife trade, air and water pollution, human diets, climate change and other issues have all fed into a breakdown of our natural systems, leading to new and fatal diseases, such as the current pandemic, and a breakdown of the global economy.
“While the exact origin and cause of the coronavirus continues to be debated,” said Kathleen Rogers, president of Earth Day Network, “scientists are sounding the alarm that unless we take better care of the planet, we risk more and even deadlier viruses ravaging our communities.”
According to the official Earth Day 2021 website, the Biden Administration has decided to convene a global leaders climate summit. This is a critical stepping stone for the U.S. to rejoin the world in combating the climate crisis. Additionally, lead organizers at EARTHDAY.ORG, Education International, Hip Hop Caucus, and Earth Uprising are organizing separate parallel climate action summits on April 20th and 21st ahead of the Biden Administration’s global leaders’ climate summit.
On April 20th, there will be a global youth climate summit consisting of panels, speeches, discussions, and special messages with today’s youth climate activists. They will address the progress that has been made on their main issues of concern, including the creation of green jobs, civic skill training, environmental justice, biodiversity protection and sustainable agriculture. In the lead up to the event, the youth organizers will put together a short list of demands that they want addressed at the Biden Administration’s climate summit.
Source: https://static.independent.co.uk/s3fs-public/thumbnails/image/2019/12/11/12/greta-thunberg-madrid.jpg
Another summit will be held on April 21st that will focus on the need for transformative climate education now. Finally, on April 22nd, EARTHDAY.ORG will produce its second Earth Day Live digital event on April 22. The multi-hour multi-channel livestream will include workshops, panel discussions, and special performances will focus on Earth Day’s 2021 theme, Restore Our Earth.
The Earth Day 2021 website also outlines a variety of ways persons all over the world can make a positive impact on the environment. Some of these great initiatives include:
The Global Earth Challenge™: gives citizen scientists the power to make the world a better place.
The campaign uses a mobile app to collect billions of observations in air quality, water quality, insect populations, climate change, plastic pollution and food sustainability, providing valuable environmental insight and a platform for policy change and restoration efforts in these areas.
It is the world’s largest-ever coordinated citizen science campaign and works to integrate existing citizen science projects, as well as build the capacity for new ones — all as part of a larger effort to grow citizen science worldwide.
The Canopy Project: for every $1 donated, 1 tree will be planted in areas in dire need of reforestation, including areas with some of the world’s communities most at-risk from climate change and environmental degradation.
The Great Global Clean-up: using their interactive map, you can search for clean-ups happening near you. If you don’t see one in your community, you can register your own and report the results.
Become a citizen scientist: share any research you collected on bees to help form a better understanding how insect populations like bees are changing. You can also support research on air quality, plastics, and food security
Climate literacy: you can sign a petition that calls for every school in the world to have compulsory, assessed climate and environmental education with a strong civic engagement component.
The website also contains a very comprehensive, practical and useful list of 51 actions and tips to make a difference every day of the year, which I will highly suggest checking out here. In fact, I suggest that you have a look at the whole website, because it contains a wealth of valuable information all in one place.
Earth Day is all about appreciating the uniqueness of our planet Earth with its incredible biodiversity. The Day also recognizes a collective responsibility, to promote harmony with nature and the Earth, to achieve a just balance among the economic, social and environmental needs of the present and future generations of humanity.
While Earth Day is only one day of the year, we should honor and nurture our planet every day. After all, as poet and environmentalist Wendell Berry said, “The earth is what we all have in common.” And we all have the responsibility to protect it.
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