How World Environment Day 2020 is Being Celebrated Despite a Raging COVID-19 Pandemic

The celebrations for World Environment Day 2020 are pushing through despite the COVID-19 pandemic and coronavirus lockdown, except that it will be quite different, with online programs and online activities.

The celebrations will be more subdued, being confined only to online activities, conferences, and seminars. While in the past years, plant seedlings/saplings are planted in the fields, today there are online gatherings that promote the protection of the environment and conservation awareness. It is prohibited to plant seedlings/saplings because of the prohibition of mass gatherings.

Thousands of participants will be expected to participate in the online programs that are conducted by NGOs and other environmental agencies and organizations. The hosts for this year's celebrations are Colombia and Germany. Last year, China was the World Environment Day 2019 host, with the theme: "Beat Air Pollution." 

"Biodiversity" is one of the themes of the World Environment Day 2020. It was chosen to be one of the themes this year because of the existential and urgent concern for protecting the planet's biodiversity. There have been bushfires in Australia, Brazil, and the U.S., as well as locust infestations experienced in East Africa. On top of all these is the pervasive COVID-19 pandemic. The U.N. says that these recent disasters show us how interdependent we are with the entire web of life, within which we live and move and have our being.

Since 1972, when the World Environment Day was established by the U.N. General Assembly, this has been the first time that citizens in almost all countries worldwide are quarantined in their houses, which consequently affected the conduct of the activities and changed them into an online nature. The World Environment Day was observed in 1974 for the first time in the U.S., in Spokane City in Washington State.

The U.N. says that celebrating this day allows us to expand our horizons in forming responsible conduct as well as enlightened opinions not only by individuals, but also by communities, organizations, and business entities, to enhance and preserve our environment.

For this year, we are being urged to control the lifestyle that we lead and to contribute to saving our environment through the planting and growing of trees; not opting to use plastic and plastic products as much as we can; and in using and promoting other, greener energy sources.

The World Environment Day is always celebrated on June 5 of each year. The other theme for the 2020 celebrations is "Time for Nature." Today's massive focus on industrialization and urbanization, which includes mineral resource extraction, are among the many factors which have wreaked widespread destruction on the environment and severely damaged our planet almost permanently. The two themes, "Time for Nature" and "Biodiversity" emphasizes the role that essential infrastructure plays in supporting life on our planet as well as human development. 

Our modern way of living has caused rapid and widespread deterioration of our environment. Technology may have incredibly increased the comforts we experience, but such a lifestyle has had untold negative consequences on the Earth. The World Environment Day 2020 celebration will explore the various ways by which we may give our contribution to environmental protection.