Thailand observes World Environment Day 2017

BANGKOK, June 5 (TNA) - As previous years, Thailand observes the World Environment Day 2017, which falls on June 5, with activities organized by agencies concerned nationwide to promote public awareness on conserving the environment. Among others, Thai Deputy Prime Minister Admiral Narong Pipatanasai presided over an event in Bangkok on Monday to present awards to agencies, organizations, communities and civil society networks that have had outstanding performances on the environment conservation, marking the World Environment Day 2017. The event, themed "Connecting People to Nature", with the slogan on "I’m With Nature" is aimed to create the public awareness on the relationship between humans and the nature and a need to sustain the relationship. The event is also aimed to pay public attention to the value of the nature and to the public understanding on the environment conservation in order to jointly ease impacts from environmental problems, in parallel with campaigns launched to create the public awareness on conserving natural resources and the environment with locals allowed to pay their central role on the environment conservation. Realizing increasing world environmental crises, the United Nations has cooperated with the international community on joint actions on concretely conserving the environment, an articulated ones are international cooperation on the Kyodo Protocal and the Paris Framework on the Reduction of Greenhouse Gas Emisisons. Meanwhile, Sakol Thinakul, Director-General of the Department of Environmental Quality Promotion, under the Thai Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment, announced that to mark the World Environment Day 2017, his ministry opens national conservation parks across the country to welcome internationa visitors with reduced or exempted fees on June 5. Permanent Secretary for Natural Resources and Environment Wicharn Simachaya told reporters, on the other hand, that the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) has launched a public campaign on organizing "Connecting People to Nature" activities, aimed to particularly create the global youth's awareness on the environment conservation, including a simple action on posting their photos taken with natural sites on social media channels with the hashtag #WithNature. (TNA)