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World Environment Day is commemorated every year on June 5 and the day was established by the United Nations General Assembly in 1972 to mark the opening of the Stockholm Conference on the Human Environment. This conference resulted in the establishment of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP). The aim of World Environment Day is; to encourage people to become active supporters of sustainable and equitable living, to promote awareness and have an understanding that communities play a central role in changing attitudes towards environmental issues, and to develop partnerships that will ensure all nations and people enjoy a safer and more fulfilling future. 2016 World Environment Day theme

This year World Environment Day will be commemorated under the theme “Go Wild for Life – Save the Environment”. This year’s theme for WED – Go Wild for Life – encourages you to celebrate all those species under threat and take action of your own to help safeguard them for future generations. This can be about animals or plants that are threatened within your local area as well as at the national or global level – many local extinctions will eventually add up to a global extinction! Whoever you are, and wherever you live, show zero-tolerance for the illegal trade in wildlife in word and deed, and make a difference. Harare Province will commemorate the event at a local school. Schools are being encouraged to exhibit their environmental initiatives on the day. A total of 250 people are expected to participate in the event.

The extinction crisis

As the Lead Agency in World Environment Day Commemorations, EMA has decided to focus on biodiversity, taking into consideration the rate of extinction of wildlife and plants. It’s frightening but true: Our planet is now in the midst of its sixth mass extinction of plants and animals — the sixth wave of extinctions in the past half-billion years. We’re currently experiencing the worst spate of species die-offs since the loss of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. Although extinction is a natural phenomenon, it occurs at a natural “background” rate of about one to five species per year. Scientists estimate we’re now losing species at 1 000 to 10 000 times the background rate, with literally dozens going extinct every day. It could be a scary future indeed, with as many as 30 to 50 percent of all species possibly heading toward extinction by mid-century.

Unlike past mass extinctions, caused by events like asteroid strikes, volcanic eruptions, and natural climate shifts, the current crisis is almost entirely caused by us – humans. In fact, 99 percent of currently threatened species are at risk from human activities, primarily those driving habitat loss, introduction of exotic species, and global warming.

Because the rate of change in our biosphere is increasing, and because every species’ extinction potentially leads to the extinction of others bound to that species in a complex ecological web, numbers of extinctions are likely to snowball in the coming decades as ecosystems unravel.

Species diversity ensures ecosystem resilience, giving ecological communities the scope they need to withstand stress. Thus while conservationists often justifiably focus their efforts on species-rich ecosystems like rainforests and coral reefs – which have a lot to lose – a comprehensive strategy for saving biodiversity must also include habitat types with fewer species, like grasslands, tundra, and polar seas – for which any loss could be irreversibly devastating. And while much concern over extinction focuses on globally lost species, most of biodiversity benefits take place at a local level, and conserving local populations is the only way to ensure genetic diversity critical for a species’ long-term survival.

Plant species

Plants are a kingdom of life forms that includes familiar organisms such as trees, herbs, bushes, grasses, vines, ferns and mosses. Through photosynthesis, they convert water and carbon dioxide into the oxygen we breathe and the sugars that provide the primary fuel for life. Through nitrogen fixation, plants generate proteins that are basic building blocks of life. Early fossil records of photosynthesising organisms date from about 3 billion years ago.

Plants were instrumental to evolution as a whole in that they produced the oxygen that made life on Earth possible – not only by “breathing” it into the atmosphere and transforming it, but also by crushing rocks with their roots, which created soils and released nutrients on a large scale. Plants are crucial to the existence of all other living creatures on Earth, both through the systemic life-support services they sustain and the food, medicine and other material resources they provide. The total number of described plant species hovers around 250,000. Unlike animals, plants can’t readily move as their habitat is destroyed, making them particularly vulnerable to extinction. Indeed, one study found that habitat destruction leads to an “extinction debt,” whereby plants that appear dominant will disappear over time because they aren’t able to disperse to new habitat patches.

Global warming is likely to substantially exacerbate this problem. Already, scientists say, warming temperatures are causing quick and dramatic changes in the range and distribution of plants around the world. With plants making up the backbone of ecosystems and the base of the food chain, that’s very bad news for all species, which depend on plants for food, shelter, and survival.

Our information on plant species numbers is far from perfect. The International Union for the Conservation of Nature’s Red List estimates that about 54 percent of evaluated plant species (not nearly all the plants on Earth) are threatened: 10 584 out of 19 738. Other estimates say about one in eight plants is considered at risk of extinction globally.

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