Every year on April 22, people around the world celebrate Earth Day to raise awareness about the environmental issues facing our planet. The movement is coordinated by Earth Day Network, whose main goal is to “build the world’s largest environmental movement”.
Here is an excerpt from the Earth Day Network mission statement:
“Earth Day Network’s mission is to diversify, educate and activate the environmental movement worldwide. Growing out of the first Earth Day, Earth Day Network is the world’s largest recruiter to the environmental movement, working with more than 50,000 partners in nearly 195 countries to build environmental democracy. More than 1 billion people now participate in Earth Day activities each year, making it the largest civic observance in the world. We work through a combination of education, public policy, and consumer campaigns.”
How Did Earth Day initiative start?
In 1969 at an UNESCO conference in San Francisco, peace activist John McConnell proposed a day to honor the Earth and the concept of peace, to first be celebrated on March 21, 1970, the first day of spring in the northern hemisphere. This day of nature’s equipoise was later sanctioned in a proclamation written by McConnell and signed by the secretary general U Thant at the united nations. A month later a separate Earth Day was founded by United States Senator Gaylord Nelson as an environmental teach-in first held on April 22, 1970. On this day, 20 million Americans marched into the streets to protest the negative impact of 150 years of industrial development.
While this April 22 Earth Day was focus on the United States, an organization launched by Denis Hayes, who was the original national coordinator in 1970, took it international in 1990 and organized events in 141 nations. Since 1990, 192 countries and over 1 billion people have joined the Earth day movement, making it “the largest civic-focused day of action in the world”.
EARTH DAY 2018
This year Earth Day is focusing on plastic pollution which is poisoning our oceans and land, injuring marine life, and affecting our health.
The president of Earth Day Network, Kathleen Rogers, is explaining the choice of this year’s theme on the organization’s website: www.earthday.org
“Earth Day Network, the organization that leads Earth Day worldwide, today announced that Earth Day 2018 will focus on mobilizing the world to End Plastic Pollution, including creating support for a global effort to eliminate single-use plastics along with global regulation for the disposal of plastics. EDN will educate millions of people about the health and other risks associated with the use and disposal of plastics, including pollution of our oceans, water, and wildlife, and about the growing body of evidence that decomposing plastics are creating serious global problems."
EDN’s End Plastic Pollution campaign includes four major components:
Leading a grassroots movement to support the adoption of a global framework to regulate plastic pollution;
Educating, mobilizing and activating citizens across the globe to demand that governments and corporations control and clean up plastic pollution;
Educating people worldwide to take personal responsibility for plastic pollution by choosing to reject, reduce, reuse and recycle plastics, and
Promoting local government regulatory and other efforts to tackle plastic pollution.
Author: Delia Dobritoiu
CELEBRATING PLANET EARTH @ PETS OF CHAMPIONS
Every year on April 22, people around the world celebrate Earth Day to raise awareness about the environmental issues facing our planet. The movement is coordinated by Earth Day Network, whose main goal is to “build the world’s largest environmental movement”.