Earth Day

Earth Day, which dates back to the late 1960s, is celebrated every year on April 22 . U.S. Senator Gaylord Nelson proposed that date to raise awareness of the challenges of overexploitation, biodiversity loss, global warming, and other trends affecting the integrity of the Earth. Around the same time, Richard Nixon’s administration laid the foundation for U.S. environmental policy with the adoption of important pieces of legislation including the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act and the Endangered Species Act. The US Environmental Protection Agency was also a product of Nixon′s administration.

In Europe, major environmental laws were passed during the 1970s . The regulatory trend did not reach emerging economies until the late 1980s. In Mexico, for example, the General Law of Ecological Balance and Environmental Protection was adopted in 1988 . Six years later, and under the pressure of the US to approve NAFTA, Mexico established the first cabinet-level environmental authority -the Ministry of Environment, Natural Resources and Fisheries (SEMARNAP, by its acronym in Spanish)-. At the global level, the Earth Summit, organized by the United Nations in 1992, was decisive in bringing environmental regulation to the rest of the world.

Today, all countries have environmental laws and institutions. They also cooperate to address global challenges such as climate change, biodiversity loss, and pollution abatement within hundreds of international agreements. However, it's easier said than done. Governments set targets they won’t meet and are hardly transparent in their accountability.?

In most cases, protecting the environment neither buys votes nor secures short-term gains. But the extraction of resources and the volume of waste we discharge into ecosystems is of such magnitude that we are reaching the limits set by the Earth to maintain its natural balance . CO2 emissions have doubled in 3 decades and natural disasters cost over 350 billion dollars a year in damages. In the last 5 decades, we have altered two-thirds of natural ecosystems and lost 70% of wildlife populations. Around 1 million animal and plant species are now threatened with extinction, many within decades . Every year 9 million people die prematurely from air and other pollutio n.

The same economy that has lifted hundreds of millions of people out of poverty , increased life expectancy, enhanced innovation, and improved access to food, health, and energy, is putting our long-term existence at risk. The underlying problem is that we have not understood that the environment is the main factor of economic capital, and its degradation fosters increasingly evident costs and risks, such as Hurricane Otis, which devastated Acapulco last November , or the threat of running out of water in Mexico City this summer . According to the World Economic Forum, nature provides economic services worth half of global GDP .

Markets are beginning to react to signals of risk and opportunity from climate change and other environmental phenomena. More than a third of privately managed investment funds have adopted ESG frameworks . In 2023, for the first time in history, there was more investment in clean energy than in fossil fuels , and the sales and investment in clean technologies generated 10% of global GDP growth . But progress is insufficient. To achieve the decarbonization goals set by governments themselves, the installed capacity of clean energy will have to triple by 2030 , not to mention the lags in biodiversity and pollution control.

In 2024, more than 2 billion people in 50 countries will elect a president . Although voting is the most powerful instrument at the disposal of citizens to influence government actions, sustainable development is still not perceived as a priority in electoral campaigns.

Article originally published in Reforma News: https://www.reforma.com/dia-de-la-tierra-2024-04-21/op269697

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