World Environment Day, 5 June, is an annual event that is aimed at being the biggest and most widely celebrated global day for positive environmental action. The theme for this year’s WED celebrations is Think.Eat.Save. Think.Eat.Save is an anti-food waste and food loss campaign that encourages you to reduce your foodprint.
UNEP Executive Director Achim Steiner’s message for World Environment Day 2013
There are celebrations around the world today and the one I'd most like to attend is being held at the prestigious and incredibly beautiful Uffizi Library in Florence, Italy
Today, World Environment Day, Earth Day Italia is launching the initiative “Forum Terra Italia”, a series of conferences and roundtables on key sustainability issues. The Forum will be inaugurated at the prestigious Uffizi Library in Florence on June 5 to celebrate WED, with a Conference entitled “Investments for a Green Reinassance – Natural, human and economic capital become partners in view of Expo 2015”.
The conference is the first event organized by Earth Day Italia to build a relational platform with companies, financial organizations, institutions and associations to design and implement impact investing projects in Green Economy and Agriculture. In fact, Earth Day Italia, together with its partners, has the objective to bring to the Expo 2015 investment interventions able to add measurable and demonstrable value to the environment and society. The investments stimulated by Earth Day Italia will channel private capital towards the Italian food excellence with the objective to reconcile agriculture and environment.
The International
Climate and Clean Air Coatlition (CCAC) is sending out this message from Paris for World Environment Day
Paris, 5 June 2013 – In recognition of this year’s World Environment Day and its theme – Think. Eat. Save: Reduce Your Foodprint – the Climate and Clean Air Coalition (CCAC) called on governments around the world to renew their efforts to reduce short-lived climate pollutants (SLCPs) for the sake of food security. SLCPs are contaminants that have a relatively short life in the atmosphere but do significant damage to crops as well as health and climate.
Reducing SLCPs, particularly black carbon and methane, can improve crop yields and soil quality, according to the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP). If measures suggested by UNEP are fully implemented—measures such as emissions reductions in the transport sector, coal mining, oil and gas production and long-distance natural gas transmission, 32-52 million metric tons of crop losses could be avoided annually from global production of wheat, maize, rice and soy annually after 2030.1
Black carbon emissions can significantly alter regional climate-energy interactions and affect rainfall patterns, leading to impacts on agriculture. Black carbon not only decreases crop productivity but also causes millions of premature deaths annually. Approximately 20 per cent of black carbon is emitted from burning biofuels, 40 per cent from fossil fuels, and 40 per cent from open biomass burning, 2 according to Veerabhadran Ramanathan, a noted climate scientist at the University of California, San Diego and member of the CCAC Science Advisory Panel.
Methane is a precursor to tropospheric ozone, which at high concentrations is phytotoxic and can lead to crop losses. Apart from its effect on crop productivity, tropospheric ozone can also impact the occurrence and severity of natural disturbances in agriculture (for example, fire or erosion) by affecting water balance, cold hardiness and tolerance to wind, and by predisposing plants to pests and diseases. Tropospheric ozone can cause a loss of agrobiodiversity as well as decreased ecosystem resilience to both extreme events and natural or human disturbances. By tackling methane emissions, the CCAC addresses the problem of tropospheric ozone at a key source.
The host for this years World Environment Day is Mongolia. Here is Mrs. S Oyun, Minister of Environment and Nature with a very important message
The message is that we all can and must be a part of protecting our planet for future generations. From a governmental to a personal level there is much that we can do and today is a great day to begin. Don't waste food. Eliminate unsustainable food such as meat and animal products. Go outside and appreciate nature: a tree, a flower, a vegetable, the sun or rain.