World Environment Day

Since 1973 the United Nations Environment Programme leads World Environment Day. It puts a global spotlight on the pressing environmental challenges of our times. This UN international day has become the largest global platform for environmental outreach, with millions of people from across the world engaging to protect the planet.

World Environment Day is a global platform to inspire positive change. People from over 150 countries participate in this United Nations international day, which celebrates environmental action and the power of governments, businesses, and individuals to create a more sustainable world.

Public transport is the most climate-friendly way of traveling besides walking and cycling. For citizens’ daily mobility, a modal shift to collective public transport and active mobility is needed. Achieving this, brings benefits to the planet and every person living on it.

This year’s World Environment Day on 5 June campaign focuses on developing solutions to restoring land, halting desertification and building drought resilience. Hosted by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, the World Environment Day 2024 campaign launched on 28 April. This comes ahead of COP16 of the UN Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD), hosted by the Kingdom in December 2024 and expected to be the largest-ever multilateral meeting on land and drought.

By restoring land and productive ecosystems, humanity can secure a nature-positive, net-zero future, safeguarding a healthy planet and achieving sustainable development. The time to prevent, halt and reverse ecosystem degradation is now. Every dollar invested in ecosystem restoration creates $30 in economic benefits.

• Register and get involved in restoration activities, events, or actions between April and June.
• Highlight your activity on the World Environment Day Activity Map and receive a registration card.
• Develop strategies and actions in the WED 2024 Practical Guide.
• Spread the word and inspire others by sharing how you are helping to revive lands, using the hashtags #GenerationRestoration and #WorldEnvironmentDay.
• Take part in the quiz and find out how much you know about the biggest crises facing our ecosystems

UITP and UNEP have worked together to promote public transport as a solution to environmental challenges since 2019.

Under the theme ‘Beat Air Pollution‘, in 2019 we showed how public transport improves air quality. It produces far fewer quanitities of air pollutant per passenger kilometre than individual motorised mobility.

One year later, in 2020 UITP teamed up with UNEP to deliver a joint statement on the necessity for cities to ‘Build Back Better‘ with more public transport. After the shock of the onset of COVID-19 at the start of the year, World Environment Day offered a clear opportunity to encourage governments to build happier, healthier cities.

Check out our news article on the statement!

2021 put the spotlight on ‘Generation Restoration‘, calling for urgent action to revive our damaged ecosystems. From parks and forests to wetlands and coasts, we all depend on healthy ecosystems for our survival.

Today is #WorldEnvironmentDay!

We have once again teamed up with @UNEP to produce a video showing the ways our sector & members contribute towards reviving our ecosystems 🌿

Watch the video below! 🎥👇

Read more here 👉 https://t.co/7aeWYdbmlq

Join #GenerationRestoration! pic.twitter.com/1LfedNfGaH

— UITP (@UITPnews) June 5, 2021

In 2022, World Environment Day reminded us that we only have ‘Only One Earth‘. Public transport is much needed to go from harming our planet, to healing it.

And in 2023, World Environment Day reminded us that our actions on plastic pollution matter.