World Environment Day | Worldwide Natural Calamities an Alarming Bell for Human Beings

World Environment Day 2020
The theme for World Environment Day 2020 is 'celebrating biodiversity'.
World Environment Day 2020
The theme for World Environment Day 2020 is ‘celebrating biodiversity’.

World Environment Day, also known as Eco Day, is celebrated on 5th June every year across the globe, highlighting and creating awareness regarding environmental issues. This annual event, celebrated worldwide, aims at bringing awareness among the people on a global level to protect nature.

Alarming call from nature

The theme of World Environment Day 2020 is biodiversity, a concern described as “both urgent and existential”. The world has been facing natural calamities such as recent bushfires in Brazil, Australia, locust attacks in several countries including India. Apart from these the global pandemic COVID-19 has created havoc worldwide. It is an alarming bell. Nature has been sending a strong message to human beings.

World Environment Day has been celebrated since 1974 with the following objectives:

  • To raise the global awareness about the importance of the healthy and green environment in the human lives.
  • To solve the environmental issues by implementing some positive environmental actions.
  • To aware common public worldwide that everyone is responsible for saving the environmental issues.

Environment Issues in India

Increasing population and vehicles are taking a toll on the climate of India with more trees being cut to make way for a concrete jungle. India needs to go on a red alert to stunt the decline of the quality of environment here.

The issues faced by India are as follows:

  • Mumbai is facing multiple challenges at this moment. The financial capital has been badly hit by COVID-19 pandemic. Cyclone Nisarga has broght lots of destruction in Mumbai.
  • Mumbai has been facing some other challenges such as environmental safety, be it insufficient treatment facilities for sewage and inadequate action plans for cleaning the city’s air, marine mammal deaths and sand mining and so on.
  • Contaminated with sewage and other industrial waste, practice of open defecation, more than half of India’s rivers are polluted and pose a threat due to poor quality of water and aquatic life. The high levels of contamination in the water bodies portend shortage of clean water in the near future. In actual figures, 40,000 million litres of sewage is produced by Indian cities every day and barely 20 percent of it is treated. Highlighting this issue and creating awareness regarding the same is very essential.
  • With climate change a reality, the country’s annual monsoon rains have become more erratic and traditional water reservoirs have shrunk. The water table in cities have plunged hundreds of feet.
  • Rivers and streams are running dry. Years of extracting the groundwater has led to a precipitous drop in the groundwater table levels across the country. This is indeed an environmental as well as a human disaster.


The government and non-government bodies in India have been making continuous efforts to improve the situation in India and there is a sign of a slight improvement, though we do have a long way to go.

Let’s Pool In To Help

Blaming the government is the easy but protecting the environment is our responsibility too!!

  • Save water
  • Save electricity
  • Learn garbage segregation and dispose accordingly.
  • Keep your neighbourhood clean.
  • Stop using polythene bags. Carry your own cloth bag when you go shopping.
  • Plant trees. Maintain a garden and if there is lack of space, maintain a garden in the balcony.
  • Educate your children about saving the environment. For when you educate your child, you have a future generation aware of the environmental issues and thus they will contribute towards safeguarding the nature that nurtures us.


Every year, on this day, people used to plant sapling besides this many programmes were organised. But this year most people are confined and living at their homes amid COVID-19 pandemic. Therefore this year’s World Environment Day celebration would be different from other years. But people can inspire each other through online or video conferencing.

Related Links:

Low Maintenance Plants for Your Homes That Purifies Air

Why Environmental Education is the Need of the Day?