This Earth Day, Lithuania looks to its environment for defense solutions

[VILNIUS, LITHUANIA] – As Earth Day celebrations kick off across the country, Lithuania’s Environment Minister said his ministry is forging a new partnership with their military to support Ukraine and use peatlands as a natural line of defense. 

“The military and environment should be friends,” Minister Kastytis Žuromskas said.

Since being appointed six months ago, the minister said that he is prioritizing how the ministry can not only engage Lithuanians to invest in nature but also how they can collaborate with the defense ministry and the European Union to restore forests, peatlands, and build sustainable systems of defense against a looming Russian threat. 

“The main safety position is that we need to have more peatlands,” Žuromskas said. “It’s not only for stopping going across the border with heavy tanks, but also about the CO2 and what can be good for us.” 

Environment Minister Kastytis Žuromskas plants watermelon seeds at the Ministry of Environment office as he takes part in the day’s festivities. [Image Credit: Avril Silva]

This work is not stopping the ministry, however, from embracing the joy of Earth Day this year. 

Unlike the United States, which celebrates Earth Day on April 22 every year, Lithuania recognizes World Earth Day on March 20th as it was officially declared in 1971 by the United Nations.

That day also marks the vernal equinox, or when the length of day and night becomes equal. 

In the capital city of Vilnius on Thursday, the ministry held a gathering of its employees to plant flowers and vegetables for their offices.

“I’m happy to see that my colleagues are doing something good, and it’s a gift to the work they do everyday,” Aistė Semėnė, a ministry employee who organized the Vilnius event, said. 

Aistė Semėnė and a colleague open soil bags and start filling pots for the planting event. [Image Credit: Avril Silva]

Over the next week, the ministry is also holding other Earth Day conservation events, classes, nature walks and charity events across the country in different regional and national parks such as in Kaunas and Panemunai.

One event includes a screening at Anykščiai Regional Park of the German documentary “Who We Were” about the state of the Earth and its future, with insights from an economist, biologist, astronaut and philosopher to follow.

As Lithuania is set to assume the Presidency of the European Union in 2027, the minister said he hopes these kinds of celebrations can show a commitment to having an environmental lens across many political and military objectives. 

“In whatever we do, we remember are all from nature, and everyone should know how to be in nature, how to feel it,” Žuromskas said.