Every June 5, since 1974, we celebrate World Environment Day, an event proclaimed by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) to highlight the importance of environmental protection.

This year, under the slogan “One Earth”, it seeks to raise awareness of the planetary “triple emergency“, made up of threats such as global warming, increased pollution and habitat loss. Likewise, this celebration aims to encourage and promote the protection and restoration of our planet, claiming a sustainable way of life in harmony with nature. The 2022 edition also aims to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Stockholm Conference, the first major international environmental event organized by the UN, and which led to the creation of the current UNEP. For this reason, the Swedish capital has been designated as the host of World Environment Day 2022.

According to the World Meteorological Organization’s (WMO) State of the Global Climate report, four of the key climate change indicators reached record highs in 2021. Thus, human activity is affecting greenhouse gas concentrations, sea level rise, ocean heat content and ocean acidification on a global scale. The aforementioned report also warns of the increase in temperatures, confirming that the last seven years have been the warmest on record.

For its part, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report on the impacts of global warming in 2019, estimates that human activities have caused global warming of approximately 1 °C compared to pre-industrial levels. In many regions and seasons, temperatures are rising above the annual global average, and there are particularly vulnerable areas such as the Arctic, where warming can be double or triple.

In this context, the third installment of the IPCC’s Sixth Assessment Report sets the goal of limiting the average increase in global temperature this century to below 1.5 ºC, in order to avoid catastrophic impacts on the environment. With current data, UNEP estimates that there is a 50% chance that global warming will exceed that figure in the next two decades.

Faced with this, the main solution proposed is to halve annual greenhouse gas emissions by 2030. Currently, according to data from the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), up to 67% of emissions of these gases are associated with our current lifestyle, and only a shift to other more sustainable models could reduce our emissions by 40 to 70% by 2050.

Otherwise, the WMO warns, exposure to polluted air will increase by 50% in this decade alone. The agency also indicates that other types of pollution such as that caused by plastic waste, which especially affect aquatic ecosystems, could triple by 2040. According to UNEP data, the global economic cost of plastic pollution in the marine environment for tourism, fisheries and aquaculture is estimated to have ranged from €5 trillion to €18 trillion in 2018.

Precisely, the impact on ecosystems and the loss of biodiversity is another of the threats present today. The United Nations notes that about one-third of the world’s cropland is degraded, about 87 percent of the world’s inland wetlands have disappeared since 1700, and one-third of commercial species are overexploited. In addition, food systems would be responsible for 80% of biodiversity loss and the loss of ecosystems would be affecting some 3,200 million people, 40% of the world’s population. In this context, the organization stresses that restoring 15% of the soil converted to cropland while halting the degradation of natural ecosystems could prevent 60% of the expected extinction of species.