MIRPUR: In Azad Jammu and Kashmir, World Environment Day 2024 was celebrated on Wednesday with the renewal of the pledge to bring about all required individual and collective efforts by all the stakeholders to avert all related threats to the environment in this era of global climate change.
“Land Restoration, Desertification, and Drought Resilience” was the theme of World Environment Day this year. The World Environment Day activities take place around the world at climax on June 5, every year, involving everyone from everywhere.
Seminars in various parts of AJK, including Mirpur, hosted by the AJK Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) of the state government, with the coordination of various segments of civil society, NGOs, and the AJK Environmental Journalist Forum, were the highlight of the day.
Like all previous years, World Environment Day was celebrated this year too by the state-run Environmental Protection Agency of Azad Jammu and Kashmir.
In Mirpur, a grand ceremony was the hallmark of World E
nvironment Day to raise awareness among people to fight against the challenges faced by the environment, through climate change in particular, on the planet.
The day was followed by a grand symposium on ‘Land Restoration, Desertification, and Drought Resilience” held in the conference hall of the local EPA office complex, in collaboration with NGOs KORT, Muslim Hands, Laraib Energy, PID AJK Govt., and AJK Environmental Journalist Forum Mirpur division to raise the importance of the individual and collective role against environmental pollution.
‘World Environment Day is an annual event that is aimed at being the biggest and most widely celebrated global day for positive environmental action,” said Sardar Idrees Mahmood, Mirpur Divisional Deputy Director Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) of the AJK government, while addressing the participants of the walk at central Shaheed managed by AJK-EPA in collaboration with the AJK Journalist Forum, students and academic staff of Kashmir Orphan Relief Trust and E
ducational Complex, Muslim Hands, the Divisional Office of Press Information Department, and other stakeholders to mark the world environmental day.
Since this year of 2024, the global environment day was marked with the formal launch of the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration 2020-2030, speakers underlined that this year Pakistan was hosting the World Environment Day 2024, and in this connection, Pakistan has launched due measures for land restoration, desertification, and drought resilience.
Speakers said that through World Environment Day, the United Nations Environment Programme emerged as a strong source to personalize environmental issues and enable everyone to realize not only their responsibility but also their power to become agents for change in support of sustainable and equitable development.
‘World Environment Day is also a day for people from all walks of life to come together to ensure a cleaner, greener, and brighter outlook for themselves and future generations, they underlined.
The grand
events to mark the WED included the display of messages on the Main Holdings of the City of Mirpur with respect to the theme of the year (June 4-5, 2024).
Besides people from various other segments of civil society, the journalist fraternity has been specially invited to participate in the event to promote the theme of the year for the conservation of bio-diversity in Jammu and Kashmir state and secure the future of the coming generation of the ancient region.