World Environment Day is the United Nations’ most important day for encouraging awareness and action to protect the environment. It falls on June 5 every year, and to mark the occasion, Google has turned its logo green with a new Doodle.
Since it was launched in 1974, World Environment Day has become a global platform for public outreach on environmental issues. Today, over 143 countries participate annually, with the support of major corporations, NGOs, communities, governments and celebrities.
Each World Environment Day is organized around a particular theme, with this year’s being “Connecting People to Nature,” and a different country will host the event every year. The the host nation for 2017 is Canada.
In a statement, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau wrote: “We are blessed to live in such a vast and beautiful land, and this year’s World Environment Day theme highlights both how important access to nature is for people, and how vital healthy ecosystems are to our global quality of life.”
Trudeau added that “it was an honor to join with leaders from 194 other parties last year to finalize the historic Paris Agreement, which outlines ambitious actions to combat climate change, adapt to its effects, and collectively build a sustainable world.”
On Thursday, President Donald Trump announced that he was pulling the U.S. out of the Paris Agreement — a move that Trudeau described as “deeply disappointing.”
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