Participants plant trees during the GPLC Africa 2024 Kenya National Tree Growing Campaign
World Environment Day is observed each year on June 5. While this global observance brings important attention to environmental protection, true transformation requires both local and global effort, sustained through daily commitment and action. The Global Peace Foundation (GPF), through its guiding vision of One Family under God, recognizes that a healthy environment is essential to lasting peace. Through its many initiatives, it works to promote environmental sustainability, resilient communities, and social cohesion.
Using a values-based, community-driven approach, GPF collaborates with multisector partners, local organizations, and community members to share knowledge and tools that strengthen environmental stewardship and promote peaceful coexistence. These efforts include reforestation projects in Mongolia and Kenya, a beach cleanup in Tanzania, an environmental education project in Cambodia, and wastewater treatment efforts in Uganda. Together, these initiatives also foster youth empowerment by cultivating current and future moral and innovative leaders and changemakers.
GPF Kenya works with partner to establish a tree nursery at Wareng High School.
Youth-led tree planting is at the heart of GPF’s environmental sustainability efforts in Mongolia, which faces one of the world’s highest rates of land degradation. To help restore the land and improve environmental health, GPF Mongolia and its youth partner organization, My Club, have planted 1 million indigenous and fruit trees across the country, supporting the government’s 1-billion-tree campaign by 2030.
GPF Kenya partners with the Chandaria Foundation and KCB Foundation to support the Chandaria Tree Nurseries Network in Kenya, a growing system currently consisting of 22 school-based and community-based nurseries across 17 counties that supply seedlings for large-scale reforestation. These nurseries support Kenya’s 15-billion-tree and 30 percent forest-cover goals. Just as importantly, they also foster the ongoing engagement of students, teachers, and local communities, serving as focal points for environmental education and youth leadership.
Volunteers pick up trash on a beach in Mtwara, Tanzania.
In Tanzania, GPF joined youth volunteers from the Vijana na Amani (Youth for Peace) campaign and partners such as the Environmental Conservation Community of Tanzania to clean up the shores of Mbezi Beach. Youth leadership and community support were at the heart of this local action to protect the environment and strengthen social harmony.
Understanding that young people need to learn as well as act, GPF leads an environmental education project in Cambodia. Students take part in both lessons and hands-on activities that build practical conservation skills and encourage them to actively protect their local environment. In Uganda, GPF’s wastewater initiative combines environmental action with social cohesion through its Environmental Peacebuilding framework. Its wastewater treatment efforts generate jobs, foster ethical entrepreneurship, and strengthen community resilience.
A healthy and sustainable environment is essential to lasting peace and harmony in our families, communities, and societies. Each of us shares the responsibility to help make this a reality. As we mark World Environment Day, let us remember that caring for the Earth is not a once-a-year observance, but a daily commitment we all must uphold.
