International Mother Earth Day 2023
Date/Time
Date(s) - 22/04/2023
All Day
Categories
April 22 is International Mother Earth Day which is celebrated to remind each of us that the Earth and its ecosystems provide us with life and sustenance.
It provides an opportunity to raise global public awareness of the challenges to the well-being of the planet and all the life it supports.
Mother Earth is clearly urging a call to action. Nature is suffering. Oceans filling with plastic and turning more acidic. Extreme heat, wildfires and floods, have affected millions of people. Even these days, we are still facing COVID-19, a worldwide health pandemic linked to the health of our ecosystem.
This special day gives us a chance to recognize our collective responsibility, first called for in the 1992 Rio Declaration, to promote harmony with nature and the Earth and to achieve a just balance among the economic, social and environmental needs of the present and future generations of humanity.
Climate change, man-made changes to nature as well as crimes that disrupt biodiversity, such as deforestation, land-use change, intensified agriculture and livestock production or the growing illegal wildlife trade, can accelerate the speed of destruction of the planet.
This Mother Earth Day will be celebrated within the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration (2021-2030). Ecosystems support all life on Earth. The healthier our ecosystems are, the healthier the planet – and its people. Restoring our damaged ecosystems will help to end poverty, combat climate change and prevent mass extinction. But we will only succeed if everyone plays a part.
For this International Mother Earth Day, let’s remind ourselves that now more than ever we need a shift to a more sustainable economy that works for both people and the planet. Join the global movement to restore our world!
The United Nations is working to promote harmony with nature and the Earth. Among other things it runs the Harmony with Nature Knowledge Network, an online platform of practitioners, academics and researchers dedicated to strengthening interdisciplinary collaborations to advance an Earth-centred rather than an a non-anthropocentric worldview, also called Earth Jurisprudence. At the core of this worldview, is the recognition of the intrinsic value of Nature and of human-Earth relationships that are symbiotic, interconnected and subject to the natural laws of the Universe.