#un environment programme

Today is World Environment Day, the day Held annually on 5 June since it was established in 1973, World Environment Day is the largest global platform for environmental public outreach. In 2023, its theme will focus on finding long-lasting, effective solutions to plastic pollution under the campaign #BeatPlasticPollution. This year’s celebrations are hosted by Côte D’Ivoire. Join millions…

Martha Isabel Ruiz Corzo, known as Pati

In the early 1980s, Pati had a successful career in Querétaro, located about two hours north of Mexico City, as first violinist of the city’s orchestra, a soloist in two choirs, and a music teacher in a prestigious private school.

‘Simpler life’

She decided she wanted to lead a simpler life and moved her family to Sierra Gorda. This drastic change meant giving up urban comforts, living without electricity for five years, and developing a closer connection with nature.

She became inspired her to work closely with the local community, replanting trees. Their activism eventually escalated into a project to have Sierra Gorda declared a protected biosphere reserve, which entailed lobby the state governor, and trying to obtain state and federal funds.

An inhabitant of the Sierra Gorda collects the vegetables produced in a sustainable project

Grassroots movement

"We are the only protected natural area in Mexico that was conceived from the bottom up”, says Pati: before submitting this petition, 130 meetings were held with community members to obtain their consent and, when they all agreed, the official request was taken to the highest national level.

Success arrived in 1997, when Sierra Gorda was named as part of the biosphere reserve, exactly a decade after the mountain communities, led by Pati and her family, launched the Sierra Gorda Ecological Group as a civil society organization, giving them an official mandate to conserve biodiversity, and raise funds to put their plans into action.

The protected area covers almost 385,000 hectares, almost a third of the state of Querétaro. Once biosphere reserve status was achieved, the projects of the Ecological Group, including environmental education and reforestation activities, began to expand, and even to extend to some areas of the Sierra Gorda outside of Querétaro.

Don Blas Fonseca, participant in a forest restoration project in the Sierra Gorda de Querétaro

Prize-winning projects

Today, more than 17,000 members of mountain communities take part in activities related to improving sanitation, education, training, agricultural diversification, food production and the regeneration of forest resources.

The achievements of the Sierra Gorda Ecological Group have earned it national and international praise, such as the recently awarded 2021 Equator Prize of the UN Development Programme (UNDP). The UN World Tourism Organization, the UN Environment Programme and National Geographic have also recognized the Group's work.

Among the group’s most recognized programmes is one related to sustainable forestry. It is based on a scheme called Payment for Environmental Services, which also monitors carbon in the forests of the Sierra Gorda.

Miguel Flores Pedraza, a 60-year-old forestry landowner, has been participating in this project for a decade, dedicating his land – about a hundred hectares – to conservation.

"I have been receiving the support for Payment of Environmental Services or carbon capture and other benefits, by leaving the land in their natural state so that it can be regenerated", he says.

"This project has helped us a lot since it is an income that compensates us" he explains and provides a concrete example of what can be done: "If I brought five or ten heads of cattle, grazing on this land, that gave me an average profit of 50,000 pesos. This is exactly what I receive today for Payment of Environmental Services by the Ecological Group.”

"This satisfies me economically and has also raised my awareness of ecological matters. I liked to see that the environment is enriched, that ecosystems are becoming restored, and the diversity of the flora and fauna has increased. Today on my land I see wild boar and pumas.”

Keeping the gears of this new environmental conservation economy oiled, requires time, and a great deal of work, not only from the owners of the land, but from those in charge of designing, implementing, and monitoring the projects.

Children in schools in Sierra Gorda, Queretaro, Mexico, learn to respect the environment in a classroom while enjoying some locally produced foods

Education, the best weapon

For Pati, the best weapon to defend and restore nature is education, which is why, 34 years ago, she began touring schools in the mountains with an accordion, singing with children and educating them about the environment. Today, in the hands of teachers, the program is running in the region's more than 150 schools.

The result is that the general population is now aware of the issues and, in some municipalities, cabinet members are ecologists.

"If you go to the market and talk about the zero-waste campaign, people know what it's all about. The merchants are in favour of the campaign and ask people to bring their own containers and baskets. It's undeniable that environmental education works", she says.

UPM Raflatac has made further progress towards a more circular economy for plastics and a future beyond fossils during 2023. The progress towards the 2025 commitments is detailed in the New Plastics Economy Global Commitment 2024 Progress Report by the Ellen MacArthur Foundation and the UN Environment Programme (UNEP). UPM Raflatac joined the Global Commitment as the first label materials company…

Phasing out ozone-depleting substances has proven to be a powerful tool for climate action that has helped slow global warming, for example, postponing the first ice-free Arctic summer by up to 15 years.

“Let’s face it. The world doesn’t have an environmental to-do list. What the world does have is an environmental must-do list. Because what we have to do is to slow climate change, protect and restore nature and biodiversity and halt desertification and end pollution and waste,” said United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) Executive Director Inger Andersen ahead of the sixth session of the UN Environment Assembly (UNEA-6) in Nairobi this month. 

More than 5,000 government, civil society and private sector representatives are expected to attend the Assembly from 24 February to 1 March to focus on how multilateral solutions can help tackle this triple planetary crisis. 

“All we need to do is get together and deliver on these global solutions that we have promised to each other so that we can secure the future for all of humanity, living on a healthy and thriving planet,” said Andersen.   

Since its establishment in 2012, UNEA has passed 90 resolutions that have delivered historic results for people and planet – reinforcing the power of multilateralism

We are here in Riyadh as part of preparations for World Environment Day, which this year is being hosted by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia on the 5th of June.

The 2024 day is focusing on land restoration, desertification and drought resilience. As a nation facing degradation, desertification and drought, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is deeply invested in delivering solutions. The Kingdom is acting nationally and regionally through the Saudi Green Initiative and the Middle East Green Initiative. And it is acting globally, as we saw when the Saudi presidency of the G20 resulted in the adoption of the Global Land Restoration Initiative.

Such action and leadership are vital as we face a worrying intensification of the triple planetary crisis: the crisis of climate change, the crisis of nature and biodiversity loss, and the crisis of pollution and waste. This crisis is placing the world’s ecosystems under assault. Billions of hectares of land are degraded, affecting almost half of the world’s population and threatening half of global GDP. Rural communities, smallholder farmers and the extremely poor are hit hardest.

But land restoration can reverse the creeping tide of land degradation, drought and desertification. Every dollar invested in restoration can bring up to US$30 in ecosystem services. Restoration boosts livelihoods, lowers poverty and builds resilience to extreme weather. Restoration increases carbon storage and slows climate change. Restoring just 15 per cent of land and halting further conversion could avoid up to 60 per cent of expected species extinctions. 

But we must also end the drivers of land degradation, drought and desertification, such as climate change. Last year, temperatures records were shattered. Much of the world felt the impacts, not just in heat but in storms, floods and drought. Restoring land without tackling climate change would be like giving with one hand and taking away with the other, so G20 nations must show leadership across the whole climate agenda – as the Kingdom has done and continues to do on land restoration.

There is real hope. Countries have promised to restore one billion hectares, an area larger than China. If they deliver, this will be huge. Through World Environment Day and through hosting the UN Convention to Combat Desertification’s conference of the parties this December, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia can build momentum and action towards these restoration goals, slow climate change, protect nature and boost the livelihoods and food security of billions of people around the world.

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