Earth Day, or Day of the Earth, takes place every year on April 22 to advocate for the future of our planet. The goal of this day is to mobilize the general public to achieve governmental measures in favor of nature protection.
The date of April 22 commemorates a specific April 22 in 1970 when, in the United States, a senator named Gaylord Nelson encouraged students to take action on environmental themes. These actions were successful and led to the creation of the United States Environmental Protection Agency.
Experts tell us: our well-being is severely threatened within the next 40 years if we do not act urgently. Already, irreversible changes to our ecosystem have been caused by human activity. Among the necessary measures, we must aim to halve greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 compared to those of 1990, in order to limit the temperature increase to 2°C.
Since then, the fight for environmental protection has made some notable advances, such as the United Nations Earth Summit held in Rio de Janeiro in 1992, as well as the Kyoto Protocol, an international program to combat climate change by reducing greenhouse gas emissions, which was ratified in 1997 by 175 countries.
Taking over from the Kyoto Protocol, the COP21 recently resulted in a historic agreement. The Paris Agreement was adopted by consensus by all 195 participating countries on December 12, 2015. It aims to fight against climate change. Specifically, it establishes a system of transparency and global review to which all countries are subject. The financing of these actions has been designed so that emerging economies can build their future in a sustainable and ecological manner.
