By Prof Govind Singh Rajwar
World Environment Day on 5 June, 2024, is being celebrated on the theme “Land Restoration, Desertification and Drought Resilience”. The slogan for this year is “Our Land, Our Future. We are Generation Restoration”. World Environment Day (WED) was declared in 1972 by the United Nations at the Stockholm Conference on the Human Environment (5–16 June 1972), resulting from discussions on integrating human relationships and the environment. A year later, on 5 June 1973, the first Environment Day was held with the theme “Only One Earth”. This day is led by United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and is the biggest international day dedicated to the cause of the environment. This year’s theme on land restoration has already been a key pillar of the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration (2021-2030), a global call for the protection and revival of ecosystems worldwide, which is critical to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The organisers of this event unite people, governments and the NGOs to restore ecosystems The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia will host the 2024 World Environment Day global celebration. As a nation facing degradation, desertification and drought, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is working to deliver solutions. The Kingdom is acting nationally and regionally through the Saudi Green Initiative and the Middle East Green Initiative. The actions of Saudi Presidency of the G20 resulted in the adoption of the Global Land Restoration Initiative. Such leadership and their action are vital as we face high intensity of the triple planetary crisis: the crisis of climate change, the crisis of nature and biodiversity loss, and the crisis of pollution and waste. This is one of the important environmental problems being faced globally, at present. Plastic has been another issue causing many problems in various land and aquatic ecosystems. Various ecosystems of the world are being heavily inundated by plastic. Over 400 million tonnes of plastic is produced annually, half of which is classified as single-use, of which only 10% is recycled. An estimated 19-23 million tonnes go into lakes, rivers and seas. Nowadays, plastic plugs the landfills, leaches into the ocean and is combusted into toxic smoke, making it the biggest threat to the planet. The single-use plastic products have severe environmental, social, economic and health consequences. Half of the total plastic produced is designed for single-use purpose only, ie., used just once and then thrown away. As per one forecast, the level of greenhouse gas emissions associated with the production, use and disposal of conventional fossil fuel-based plastics would grow to 19 percent of the global carbon budget by 2040. Rivers and lakes carry plastic waste from deep inland to the sea, making them major contributors to ocean pollution. The disposal of plastic is the need of the day to protect the environment from plastic related pollution. It is estimated that the amount of plastic waste entering aquatic ecosystems could nearly triple from 9-14 million tonnes per year in 2016 to a projected 23-37 million tonnes per year by 2040.
Desertification and its mitigation is the main global focus of this year’s World Environment Day celebrations as the world loses an estimated 100 million hectares of healthy land annually due to desertification, drought and land degradation. Rapid land degradation is caused mainly due to unsustainable land management practices leading to soil erosion. In such areas there is continuous loss of the soil and its erosion which accelerates desertification. For example, Eastern and Central Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean have more than a fifth of their total land areas classified as degraded. The United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) has set a target to restore 1 billion hectares of degraded land by 2030. Botswana and the Dominican Republic have shown satisfactory results. Such results show that land restoration can reverse the creeping tide of land degradation, drought and desertification. Restoration boosts livelihoods, lowers poverty and builds resilience to extreme weather, and it also increases carbon storage and slows climate change. The potential causes of land degradation, drought and desertification need to be identified and brought to an end. The world is coping with the impacts of rising temperatures, not just in heat, but in storms, floods and drought. Restoring land without mitigating climate change would be like giving with one hand and taking away with the other, so G20 nations must come forward across the whole climate agenda – as the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has done and continues to do on land restoration and mitigation of desertification. By hosting World Environment Day, and through hosting the UN Convention to Combat Desertification’s Conference of the parties in December 2023, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia can build momentum and action towards these restoration goals, slow climate change, protect nature, and boost the livelihoods and food security of billions of people around the world. As many as 150 countries including governments, businesses, communities and individuals participate in the World Environment Day celebration and work to protect and restore the Earth. In India, land degradation and desertification pose an environmental problem as deserts are replacing vegetated and human settlement areas. Various natural ecosystems, such as forests, farmlands, savannahs, peatlands and mountains, provide humanity with food, water and raw materials for survival. As per estimates, more than 2 billion hectares of the world’s land is degraded, thereby affecting more than 3 billion people. UNEP aims to show governments, businesses and everyday people can halt land degradation and restore natural spaces to their former shape. It is expected that, this year, United Nations, NGOs and other bodies will celebrate together the WED to show how best they can tackle the problem of desertification, land degradation and drought. The majority of people living in Asia and the Pacific live in cities, and the increasing urbanisation is expected to increase the impacts of water stress and urban droughts. The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) on this day will bring together the partners and stakeholders in Asia and the Pacific on a platform to discuss the priority areas on land restoration, desertification and drought resilience in the region. During this event, the applicable solutions such as circular water resource use, sustainable food production and drought-resilient urban development will be discussed. Restoring ecosystems is much more than planting trees and involves reviving the natural processes and relationships that sustain life. More efforts are needed to meet the required restoration goals and to mitigate the widespread impacts of land degradation on ecosystems, food security, and climate change. Urgent action to mitigate the climate crisis is required as highlighted in the latest IPCC report, which warns of rising temperatures and biodiversity loss. In Atharvaveda, the Earth is considered as the mother, and human beings symbolise her sons. Not only this, Vedas have also explained the importance of trees and plants including their plantation on the lunar eclipse day. Trees provide us with Prana Vayu and maintain the harmony between the earth and the sky. As per Vedic astrology, a person can get freedom from ailments, physical, social, and economic problems by planting a tree. This is perhaps one of the reasons, our ancestors worship trees. The world community can mitigate climate change and improve human well-being using ecosystem restoration strategies. Largescale planting is not only important for the environment but also economically beneficial. Green recovery strategies provide a unique opportunity to prioritise ecosystem restoration. All stakeholders including governments, businesses, communities and individuals need to mount public and political pressure to solve such problems, especially the desertification crisis, of the Mother Earth.
