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Earth Day: We must reconcile humans with nature

21 April 2021

Last update:20 April 2023

As the world enters the second year of a worldwide health crisis, International Mother Earth Day, celebrated every year on 22 April, is a reminder of how deeply humanity is connected to its common home, Planet Earth. Although our immediate efforts must remain focused on tackling the pandemic, we must seize this opportunity to raise citizens’ awareness of the role humanity plays in the Earth system and how our actions can impact us all.

There is only one Earth, not one planet for nature and another for humans. However, it seems that our planet is being treated as a distant backdrop in most people’s lives. Yet, everything we use and eat has either been mined or grown. In search of the raw materials to create these objects and support our livelihoods, making use of our unequalled intellectual capacities, humans have exerted a marked domination over the planet, changing it in such a way that humanity is now widely recognised as the dominant changing force, justifying in the opinion of many researchers the denomination of our own epoch, the Anthropocene.

Despite this, we are still in time to reorient our societies, mindsets and economies towards sustainability, seeking to reconcile the natural world with viable economic perspectives.

The central theme of this year’s International Mother Earth Day, Restoring our Planet, resounds well with UNESCO’s interdisciplinary strategy for biodiversity, based on three pillars: restore the relationship between humans and nature and regenerate ecosystems; conserve the harmony of our ecosystems; and amplify the power of youth.

UNESCO’s work is embedded in safeguarding biological and geological diversity and a diversity of communities’ worldviews, social practices, cultural expressions, languages and knowledge systems respectful of the living.

The ambition to protect 30 % of our planet is an important goal, but pointless if in other locations we continue to destroy the ecosystems which sustain life. UNESCO’s ambition is to reconcile 100% of humans with the rest of nature, so that all humans become custodians of Earth, our common home, that we inhabit and share with all other living species. In addition to halting destruction and restoring ecosystems, we therefore need to restore and regenerate our relationship with nature and life by creating new ethical behavior of care, responsibility, and solidarity.

Due to its transdisciplinary mandate, UNESCO promotes linkages between nature and culture and considers that the intrinsic value and the importance of biodiversity for our identity, our heritage and for human well-being could be recognized in a holistic manner in the proposed post-2020 targets related to biodiversity.

It is time to reinvent our way of living with nature, to protect and respect it, and to have more sustainable ways of development and economic activities. And this is precisely why the Man and the Biosphere programme was created 50 years ago.

Audrey Azoulay, Director-General of UNESCO

The backbone of this strategy are UNESCO designated sites, places of unique biological and geological diversity, where people strive to find such balance. Together, they cover 6% of the Earth’s landmass: 252 , 714 and 169 working to build a better, more inclusive and more sustainable world.

Let us therefore take collective responsibility and promote a stronger harmony with the planet, working to achieve a just balance between the economic, social and environmental needs of present and future generations. A balance that works for people as well as for the planet.

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