September 16, 2020: Several organisations across the globe are hosting seminars, awareness campaigns on the World Ozone Day today.

World Ozone Day 2020 is celebrated across the globe on September 16 every year. The day is observed to create awareness among the people about the importance of the Ozone layer in our atmosphere and the increasing depletion in the ozone layer.

World Ozone Day shows that collective decisions and action, guided by science, are the only way to solve major global crises.

On December 19, 1994, the United Nations General Assembly proclaimed September 16 the International Day for the Preservation of the Ozone Layer, commemorating the date, in 1987, on which the Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer was signed.

In 1985, the world’s governments adopted the Vienna Convention for the Protection of the Ozone Layer. Under the Convention’s Montreal Protocol, governments, scientists and industry worked together to cut out 99 per cent of all ozone-depleting substances. Thanks to the Montreal Protocol, the ozone layer is healing and expected to return to pre-1980 values by mid-century. In support of the Protocol, the Kigali Amendment, which came into force in 2019, will work towards reducing hydrofluorocarbon (HFCs), greenhouse gases with powerful climate-warming potential and damaging to the environment.