Côte d’Ivoire will host World Environment Day on June 5, announced Jean-Luc Assi, Ivorian Minister of the Environment and Sustainable Development, on Monday March 13 at the event’s launch ceremony in Abidjan.
“Côte d’Ivoire is this year’s host country for World Environment Day”, organized each year by the UN, said the Minister.
The theme of this year’s event is “solutions to plastic pollution”, “a scourge that threatens us all”, said Mr. Assi.
More than 150 countries will be taking part in the day, whose fiftieth anniversary will be celebrated this year.
Jean-Luc Assi affirmed the Ivorian government’s commitment to being “a model of sustainable development”.
Côte d’Ivoire ratified the Paris climate agreement, which came into force in 2016, to keep average global temperatures below 2°C.
The Ivorian government had also decided, in May 2013, to ban the production, marketing, possession and use of plastic bags.
However, when this decision came into force in November 2014, it triggered a demonstration by shopkeepers in Abidjan, and is now very little enforced in the country.
This edition follows a resolution adopted in 2022 by the United Nations Assembly to establish a “binding” legal “instrument” on plastic pollution, scheduled for the end of 2024.
According to the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), 400 million tonnes of plastic are produced worldwide every year, half of which is designed for single use.
Since Monday May 29, 175 countries have been meeting in Paris to draw up the first outlines of a treaty against plastic pollution, but negotiations have stalled over the substance because the countries cannot agree on the rules for the final adoption of the text.
He estimates that between 19 and 23 million tonnes of plastic end up in lakes, rivers and oceans.