Need to know: Top 10 facts about World Environment Day

• World Environment Day has been held every year on June 5 since 1974, and engages governments, businesses, celebrities and citizens in more than 100 countries
• The UN General Assembly established World Environment Day in 1972 at the Stockholm Conference on the Human Environment
• The theme for this year’s World Environment Day is “Time for Nature, which focuses on biodiversity
• This year’s World Environment Day was hosted by Colombia, one of the most biodiverse countries on earth and home to more than 51,000 species
• World Environment Day has its own anthem. Called Earth Anthem, it was written by poet Abbay K
• Recent global events – from bushfires in Brazil, the United States and Australia to locust infestations across East Africa and the COVID-19 pandemic – have highlighted the importance of World Environment Day and the effects climate change is having on the environment
• Biodiversity involves 8 million plant and animal species, the ecosystems that house them and the genetic diversity among them
• In the past 150 years, the world’s live coral reef cover has been reduced by half
• Within the next decade, the UN has warned that one out of every four known species face being wiped off the planet
• According to the UN, it would take 1.6 earths to meet the demands that humans make on nature each year

Source: United Nations