The United Nations has designated June 5 every to celebrate "World Environment Day" with the aim of raising awareness and conducting educational activities in environmental conservation.

The theme of this year's World Environment Day is biodiversity to highlight the the interdependence of humans and biodiversity as shown by recent events including the wildfires in Brazil, America and Australia, the locust plague in East Africa, and the current global COVID-19 pandemic.

As introduced in the UN website, biodiversity provides the foundation for all life on land and underwater. Changes in biodiversity and partial deficiencies have a negative impact on the entire system. Deforestation, wildlife habitat erosion, agricultural expansion and accelerating climate change are pushing nature to the limit. Each year, it would take 1.6 Earths to meet the demands that human made on nature. As long as this trend continues, it could lead to the collapse of human society, including the collapse of the food and health system.

The emergence of COVID-19 has revealed that the destruction of biodiversity results in the disruption of the systems that support human life. Today, the coronavirus is believed to cause about one billion cases of illness and millions of deaths worldwide, and that 75% of newly emerging infectious diseases are zoonotic diseases.

Reference

United Nations. World Environment Day June 5 2020. Time for nature https://www.un.org/en/observances/environment-day

Contributor: IIYAMA Miyuki (Research Strategy Office)