opinion

June 5 is World Environment Day.

The day which has been commemorated every year since 1973 serves as an opportunity to raise public awareness about environment and encourage action to this end. 

On the initiative of the United Nations Environment Programme, over 150 countries and international and non-governmental organizations have annually conducted various activities for environmental protection on the occasion of the day.

The UN Environment Programme set “Climate action” as the theme for this year’s WED and called on all countries to have a correct understanding of climate change and take active measures to minimize its consequences.

Our country, too, has directed efforts to minimizing the effects of climate change and bringing about innovations in managing land and protecting environment.

Activities are briskly conducted to transform forests to be useful.

According to the afforestation plan to turn all forest zones of tree want, simple forests and forests of shrubs into useful forests of economic value, more saplings of useful trees of good species and of high utility value have been produced and the scientific level of tree planting has been raised to ensure the maximum rate of rooting.

Amid the brisk mass movement for afforestation, all mountains of the country are turning into “gold and treasure mountains” including such forests of economic value as timber forest, oil-bearing forest and raw-material forest for paper production growing thickly.

And progress has been made in the work to establish a perfect water control system for managing reservoirs and rivers in a scientific and unified way.

The 2026 Spring Aesthetic Symposium in the Field of Land and Environment Protection held last May dealt with the ways to carry out river improvement, which takes an important part in the protection of ecological environment, in a scientific and technological way in keeping with the world trend of development and the specific conditions of the country.

A great number of successes have been achieved in the work for improving the technical conditions of roads and urban management, sprucing up parks and pleasure grounds and normalizing their management and creating beautiful landscapes by planting good species of trees and flowers.

In recent years, laws of the DPRK and regulations including laws on environmental protection, waste disposal and recycling have been amended to consolidate the legal foundation for creating better environments across the country.