RESTORE our Earth is the theme of this year’s International Mother Earth Day, to recognize the “Earth and its ecosystems as humanity’s common home and the need to protect her to enhance people’s livelihoods, counteract climate change, and stop the collapse of biodiversity.”
April 22 was declared International Mother Earth Day by the United Nations General Assembly through a resolution adopted in 2019, although countries across the world have already marked this date to campaign for the steady decline of our environment. As forests disappear, polar ice caps melt and as natural calamities grow in strength and frequency, the call to save the planet has become more urgent than ever before. With COVID-19 still raging, we are made consciously aware that something has to be done now and that we are all accountable to the destruction of the place we live in.
In a message during the two summits on April 22; the international leaders summit on climate organized by U.S. President Joe Biden, and the Earth Day Live livestream organized by the Earth Day Network, Pope Francis in a video message said “Both the global catastrophes, Covid and climate change, prove that we do not have time to wait.”
“Time urges us, and as COVID-19 demonstrated, we do have the tools to face the loss. We have the instruments. This is the moment to act. We are at the edge.”
The pandemic has shown us that despite the modern technology available and the sophistication of societies, we are all vulnerable to disasters. Earth is our home and we fiercely protect it, even if it is just a pale blue dot in the universe.
