International Earth Day

To preserve the blessings and beauty that nature has bestowed upon us.April 22 marks Earth Day, the birthday of D. Sterling Morton, administrator of the state of Nebraska in the northern United States, who later served as Minister of Agriculture. It belongs to him the idea of creating a holiday, preserving those blessings and beauties that nature gave us.

Earth Day was first held in 1970 and since then every year on April 22, the world’s population celebrates this holiday. Every year, 3,000 groups participate in the programs and about 100,000 people organize work around the world.

In 1990, this day became an international action, which was attended by 200 million people from 141 countries. By 2000, the event had hundreds of millions of participants from 181 countries.

Earth Day is a holiday celebrated by people of all nationalities and religions.

Every year, scientists from around the world gather at a round table to discuss global environmental problems. For example, in 2006, the Center for Environmental Education and Information (CEOI) organized a round table where twenty professors from various universities, heads of NGOs and officials gathered to discuss approaches of Russia and the United States to control and prevent environmental problems.

The U.S. government and CEOI have been successfully cooperating in various fields since 1994. More than twenty specialists in the field of ecology from the Urals and Western Siberia visited the United States as part of the educational programs of the US State Department.

The Earth Day Network is an international non-governmental organization that unites 12,000 organizations in 174 countries. The Earth Day Network aims to develop environmental education. In the American Corner of Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk, an exhibition of posters dedicated to Earth Day opens annually. The purpose of the exhibition is to draw people’s attention to the problems of the ecology of our planet.

According to foreign media reports, a variety of events and actions are organized in different countries on this day. These are conferences, exhibitions, closure of automobile traffic on the busy streets of major cities, cleaning of the territory and planting trees.