Europeans kindled their deep-held love for nature on World Environment Day, while political commitments are helping ensure this can be passed on for generations to come.

Celebrated on 5 June each year, World Environment Day is the largest global day for positive environmental action.

This year, the theme of ‘connecting people to nature’ highlighted the vast benefits - from food security and improved health to water supply and climatic stability - that a clean environment provides to humanity.

“While we are evermore connected online, we risk disconnecting ourselves from where we come from and what gives us everything we have: nature,” underlined UN Environment’s Europe Director Jan Dusík.

“It is essential for us to have clean air, safe and good food and countless other services in our lives. We need nature, it does not need us,” he reminded, inviting Europeans to reflect but also join in with the myriad of actions organised in the region.  

“You only have to do the slightest thing to connect to nature,” the legendary naturalist Sir David Attenborough told us in the run-up to 5 June.

From heralding the opening of new or better-managed protected areas and national parks, to cleaning-up natural sites, to people visiting organic farms and renewable energy sites or simply choosing to eat lunch outside on the grass, Europeans formed a movement  not only for the Day but for long into the future.  

Read on to discover which country in our region is doubling the proportion of its territory that is protected, what top European Union officials had to say on their engagement for nature, what schools across the world did around 5 June, which Alpine mountain was cleaned-up and much more!

For more information write to isabelle.valentiny@unep.org or mark.grassi@unep.org