In 1972 the UN agency United Nations Environmental Program declared June 5th as the World Environment Day.

Despite the action being undertaken for the protection of the Earth, various environmental problems are being exacerbating. The natural resources are not being used for water and food security for the peoples of Africa, of Asia etc, but they are being plundered by the monopolies. The rivalries between imperialist states for the control of natural resources often lead to armed interventions with destructive effects on the environment and the peoples of these countries.

The monopolies and the laws and directions that serve them, consider the environment to be a field of action to attract investments, to extract raw materials for the production of goods, and to dispose of the waste created by these activities. This means that large monopoly groups continue to destroy the environment in the hunt for profit.

In this framework, they prioritize the saving of water demand, instead of measures of enrichment of the underground aquifers in each water compartment. The developed countries send their worst kind of garbage to developing countries, where huge landfills are created. They exploit the forests and ecosystems by further commercializing forest land for tourism and investments on Renewable Sources of Energy. They give waste management to private companies which do not guarantee the proper conditions of waste treatment and cause new strains on the environment.

The devastating floods or accidents with serious environmental impact like the oil spills, reflect the policy of capitalist states, which do not protect nor the lives of citizens neither their environment, while the most poor population of each country is the first to suffer by the extreme weather phenomena.

The protection of the environment for the benefit of the people, demands today’s struggles of the working class, of the ordinary people against the commercialization of water, forests, natural resources, against the exploitation of nature for the capitalist profits, against the imperialist wars. The WFTU will continue fighting and promoting these demands that can assure improvement of the environmental problems and of life itself.

The Secretariat