Environment Days

🇧🇷How does Brazil mark Environment Days?Dia da Árvore

Brazil's tree day has two dates, and in law it has already been renamed. Article 1 of Decree No. 55,795 of 24 February 1965 establishes, throughout the national territory, the Annual Festival of Trees — "in substitution for the so-called Tree Day currently celebrated on 21 September." Article 3 explains why one date would not do: the country's physiographic and climatic range is too wide, so Acre, Amazonas, Pará, Maranhão, Piauí, Ceará, Rio Grande do Norte, Paraíba, Pernambuco, Alagoas, Sergipe and Bahia mark it in the last week of March, while Espírito Santo, Rio de Janeiro, Minas Gerais, Goiás, Mato Grosso, São Paulo, Paraná, Santa Catarina, Rio Grande do Sul and the Federal District mark it in the week beginning 21 September. Article 4 assigns the celebrations to the ministries of Agriculture and of Education and Culture. Sixty years on, what Brazilians actually say is still the superseded name, Dia da Árvore. It is not a national holiday: Law No. 662 of 1949, in the wording given by Law No. 10,607 of 2002, lists 1 January, 21 April, 1 May, 7 September, 2 November, 15 November and 25 December. The environment day Brazil did put into a statute is a different one — Law No. 12,633 of 14 May 2012 created the National Environmental Education Day on 3 June, nationwide, and it is not a day off either.

planalto.gov.br ↗planalto.gov.br ↗

🇮🇳How does India mark Environment Days?National Pollution Prevention Day

India's 2 December commemorates an accident rather than nature. The Kerala Department of Environment and Climate Change states it plainly: 2 December is observed as National Pollution Prevention Day — government pages also write it as National Pollution Control Day — in memory of those who died in the Bhopal gas disaster, which happened on the night of 2–3 December 1984 through the release of methyl isocyanate. The Department of Chemicals and Petrochemicals records what followed institutionally: the Bhopal Gas Leak Disaster (Processing of Claims) Act, 1985 came into force on 20 February 1985 together with the registration and claims scheme, and the Office of the Welfare Commissioner for Bhopal Gas Victims was set up the same year; on directions of the Supreme Court, Union Carbide Corporation deposited US$470 million in compensation in February 1989; by 31 July 2024 the office had disbursed Rs 1,549.33 crore to 5,73,959 of 5,74,394 claimants. The day is not a holiday: the 2026 list of gazetted holidays for central government offices, issued under DoPT O.M. F.No.12/2/2023-JCA of 3 July 2025 — the Uttarakhand list is the one quoted here, and these lists are compiled state by state — runs to seventeen days, and 2 December is not one of them.

envt.kerala.gov.in ↗chemicals.gov.in ↗

🇨🇳How does China mark Environment Days? · 植树节

China put its tree-planting day in the body of a statute. Article 10 of the Forest Law reads: planting trees and protecting forests is a duty of every citizen; governments at every level shall organise the nationwide compulsory tree-planting activity; 12 March each year is Arbor Day. This version of the Forest Law was revised by the fifteenth session of the Standing Committee of the 13th National People's Congress on 28 December 2019 and took effect on 1 July 2020. The wording makes planting an obligation rather than a holiday: under the Measures on Holidays for National Annual Festivals and Memorial Days as revised in November 2024, the days on which all citizens are off work are New Year's Day, Spring Festival, Qingming, Labour Day, Dragon Boat, Mid-Autumn and National Day — seven, none of them environmental. One coincidence is worth noting: 12 March appears in Taiwan's Act on Commemorative Days and Holidays as the anniversary of the death of the founding father, so the two Arbor Days on either side of the strait share a date with that memorial.

npc.gov.cn ↗gov.cn ↗

🇹🇼How does Taiwan mark Environment Days? · 植樹節

Taiwan's Arbor Day is 12 March, listed in article 5, item 6 of the Act on Commemorative Days and Holidays — as a "festival day", not a "commemorative day", and the two categories run through different rules in the same statute. Article 6 names the festival days that are off work: Lunar New Year's Eve and New Year, Children's Day, Qingming, Labour Day, Dragon Boat, Teachers' Day, Mid-Autumn, indigenous ceremonial days, and the fire service, police, armed forces and coast guard days as their competent authorities decide. It then closes with a single sentence: festival days other than those in the first paragraph are not days off. That sentence is what excludes Arbor Day. Article 7 gives it a different kind of standing instead: agencies, organisations and schools may hold commemorative, celebratory or folk activities as suits the day. And one thing only the text shows: article 3 of the same Act also puts 12 March down as the anniversary of the founding father's death, while article 4 grants a day off to just six commemorative days — that one is not among them. In Taiwan 12 March carries two names and neither of them stops work.

law.moj.gov.tw ↗

🇺🇸How does United States mark Environment Days? · Earth Day

Earth Day in the United States is 22 April, as the Environmental Protection Agency's own page states. It is not a federal holiday: 5 U.S.C. §6103 lists eleven legal public holidays — New Year's Day, the Birthday of Martin Luther King Jr., Washington's Birthday, Memorial Day, Juneteenth, Independence Day, Labor Day, Columbus Day, Veterans Day, Thanksgiving and Christmas — and Earth Day is not among them. The sharper measure is chapter 1 of title 36, the permanent list of patriotic and national observances Congress has designated: forty-eight of them, sections 101 through 148, and Earth Day is absent there too. What is present is §104, Carl Garner Federal Lands Cleanup Day (the first Saturday after Labor Day), and §123, National Forest Products Week (the week beginning the third Sunday in October). Earth Day itself began in the spring of 1970, created by Senator Gaylord Nelson; twenty million Americans demonstrated, and in December of that year Congress authorised the creation of the EPA.

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epa.gov ↗epa.gov ↗

🇯🇵How does Japan mark Environment Days? · みどりの日

Midori no Hi — Greenery Day — is one of Japan's sixteen national holidays, set out in article 2 of the Act on National Holidays (Act No. 178 of 1948): 4 May, for "becoming familiar with nature, being grateful for its blessings, and cultivating a rich heart." Article 3 is the sentence that separates Japan from the other six countries here: national holidays are days off, full stop. The origin, though, has nothing to do with nature. When the Act was written, the Emperor's Birthday fell on 29 April, the birthday of the Showa Emperor. After the accession in 1989 the Emperor's Birthday moved to 23 December, and the 29 April slot was renamed Midori no Hi in that year's amendment so that the holiday itself would remain. A further amendment in 2005 turned 29 April into Showa Day from 2007 and moved Midori no Hi to 4 May, inside Golden Week. The Cabinet Office also runs a Greenery Month from 15 April to 14 May and a Midori Academic Prize.

laws.e-gov.go.jp ↗www8.cao.go.jp ↗

🇮🇩How does Indonesia mark Environment Days?Hari Lingkungan Hidup Sedunia

Indonesia observes World Environment Day — Hari Lingkungan Hidup Sedunia — on 5 June, as the Ministry of Forestry's own calendar records. It is not on the list of public holidays. Presidential Decree No. 8 of 2024, signed on 29 January 2024, consolidated holiday rules that had been scattered across several earlier decrees into a single instrument and set out sixteen holidays for that year: New Year's Day, Isra Mi'raj, Lunar New Year, Nyepi, Good Friday, Easter, the two days of Idulfitri, International Labour Day, the Ascension of Jesus Christ, Waisak, Pancasila Day, Iduladha, Islamic New Year, Independence Day, Maulid and Christmas. Not one of them is environmental. Indonesia also keeps a date of its own making: 28 November, Hari Menanam Pohon Indonesia, Indonesia's tree-planting day, which likewise appears on the ministry calendar and likewise is not a day off.

kehutanan.go.id ↗kehutanan.go.id ↗

🇯🇵How does Japan mark Environment Days? · 環境の日

Japan's other environment day is not a holiday at all. Environment Day falls on 5 June under article 10 of the Basic Environment Act (Act No. 91 of 1993): the day exists to deepen public and business awareness of environmental conservation, paragraph 2 fixes the date, and paragraph 3 asks only that national and local government "endeavour to carry out projects befitting its purpose" — a duty to try, not a day off. The Ministry of the Environment designates the whole of June as Environment Month; the FY2026 programme was announced by the Minister's Secretariat on 28 May 2026. The date carries a detail worth keeping: it marks the UN Conference on the Human Environment that opened in Stockholm on 5 June 1972, and the United Nations designated 5 June as World Environment Day on a proposal from Japan. The 5 June that Taiwan, Indonesia and Brazil each use later on starts here.

laws.e-gov.go.jp ↗env.go.jp ↗

🇹🇼How does Taiwan mark Environment Days? · 環境日

The statutory name for 5 June in Taiwan is simply "Environment Day", article 5, item 14 of the Act on Commemorative Days and Holidays, an Act administered by the Ministry of the Interior under article 2. It runs on the same rule as Arbor Day — the closing sentence of article 6, that festival days outside the listed set are not days off. The wording is the bare "Environment Day", not the "World Environment Day" people say in conversation. And the Environmental Education Act, last amended on 29 November 2017, designates no date at all anywhere from article 1 to article 26; it governs environmental education plans, the certification of facilities and personnel, and the hours of environmental instruction imposed on offenders. Taiwan's 5 June therefore comes from the holidays statute, not from the environmental education statute — the duty and the date live in two different laws.

law.moj.gov.tw ↗law.moj.gov.tw ↗

🇨🇳How does China mark Environment Days? · 全国生态日

National Ecology Day is the newest entry on this page. On 28 June 2023 the third session of the Standing Committee of the 14th National People's Congress adopted a decision establishing 15 August as National Ecology Day, with the state to conduct education and publicity on ecological civilisation in various forms. It was created by a decision of the Standing Committee rather than by an article of a statute, a different rung from Arbor Day, and like Arbor Day it is not a day off. The choice of date was stated openly: the Ministry of Ecology and Environment explained that on 15 August 2005, during an inspection of Anji county in Huzhou, Zhejiang, Xi Jinping first put forward the formulation "lucid waters and lush mountains are invaluable assets." The first National Ecology Day was marked on 15 August 2023 in Huzhou, hosted jointly by the National Development and Reform Commission with the Central Publicity Department, the Ministry of Natural Resources, the Ministry of Ecology and Environment and the Zhejiang provincial government.

gov.cn ↗mee.gov.cn ↗