He World Environment Day was established by United Nations in 1972 after the Conference on the Human Environment in Stockholm, which was a turning point in international politics. At that meeting, environmental problems were recognized as a central axis of multilateral discussions and states were urged to take measures to curb the degradation that human activity produced on nature.
50 years after the first commemoration of the World Environment Dayvarious specialists warned that the planet is in a “ecological collapse” due to the increase in global temperature, the loss of biodiversity and plastic pollution, among other problems, and they recognized that there is still “a window of opportunity” thanks to the greater social awareness that has been generated in recent times.
Coinciding with the anniversary of this year, the United Nations chose to alert the world to plastic pollution, as more than 400 million tons of plastic are produced globally each year, half of which are intended for a single-use lifetime. Likewise, microplastics (plastic particles whose diameter is less than 5 mm) invade food, water and even the air, they warned from the organism.
Last week, an international investigation published in the journal Nature assured that humanity has already transgressed the limits for a “safe and fair” planet in relation to the increase in global temperature, the use of fresh water, the conservation of nature and pollution. from air. He Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reported that greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions have increased since the pre-industrial era by 70% between 1970 and 2004.
The Earth’s average temperature is now 1.1°C higher than it was at the end of the 19th century and the 10 warmest years on record worldwide have occurred since 2005, according to the IPCC. A factor that will depend on the awareness and commitment that the most developed countries must assume in order to reduce pollution and the consequences of climate change throughout the world.
On the other hand, the populations of wild animals have been reduced by an average of 69% in the last decades and 97% of the world’s mammals are humans and domesticated species, according to the World Conservation Organization Living Planet Report 2022 (WWF) 50 years after the first commemoration of World Environment Day, the loss of biodiversity in the world is one of the great environmental problems facing humanity.
The global Living Planet Index 2022 showed a mean decline of 69% in the analyzed populations of wild animals between 1970 and 2018, with Latin America seeing the largest regional decline in mean population abundance at 94%. In freshwater environments, mammals, birds, amphibians, reptiles, and fish in these habitats have reduced their numbers by an average of 83% from 1970 to the present.
TELAM source.
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