Italy to Lead Global Celebrations of World Environment Day, Spark Action on Sustainable Future

World Environment Day 2015 to Take Centre Stage at Milan Expo.

This year's WED slogan is ‘Seven Billion Dreams. One Planet. Consume with Care’.

Nairobi/Rome, 7 April 2015 - Italy has today been named host of this year's World Environment Day (WED) global celebrations on 5 June, in a joint announcement made by the Government of Italy and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP).

The theme of this year's World Environment Day is resource efficiency and sustainable consumption and production in the context of the planet's regenerative capacity, as captured in the slogan 'Seven Billion Dreams. One Planet. Consume with Care'. Affirming WED as a global public outreach platform, this slogan emerged as the top choice by the global community through social media voting.

The 2015 global WED celebrations will be organized at the world famous Universal Exhibition, which attracts over 20 million visitors. Expo Milano 2015 will run from May 1 to October 31 and is expected to include over 140 countries plus a significant number of international organizations.

One of three UN Days that the UN Expo Team has chosen to mark at the Milan Expo this year, WED will support and complement the Expo theme of 'Feeding the Planet - Energy for Life', which showcases state-of-the-art technology, ideas and solutions that can help guarantee healthy, safe and sufficient food for everyone, while respecting the planet and its equilibrium.

"It is an honour for Italy to work together with UNEP in leading the global celebrations for World Environment Day 2015," said Italian Minister for the Environment Gian Luca Galletti. "This year, WED will focus on the need to respect the carrying capacity of the planet and to manage natural resources efficiently - all aspects that are of utmost importance if we really want to ensure prosperity and wellbeing globally."

"I firmly believe in the benefits offered by sustainable consumption and production models in terms of economic opportunities, inclusiveness, employment, resiliency and quality of life," he said. "We have a unique opportunity to take advantage of the international and multidimensional arena represented by EXPO 2015 to stimulate greater thinking and action on these topics in view of the crucial decisions that will be taken later this year: the launch of the post-2015 development agenda in September, and the new agreement on Climate Change in December."

Announcing World Environment Day 2015, UN Under-Secretary-General and UNEP Executive Director Achim Steiner said, "While industrialized countries account for the bulk of the world's resource consumption, unsustainable consumption patterns are becoming more prevalent worldwide, with 3 billion middle class consumers expected to be added to the global population by 2030 - many of them from emerging economies."

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