Ozone Day 2017 and the 30th anniversary of the Montreal Protocol

This September marks 30 years since the Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer was adopted. In honour of this important milestone, the Ozone Secretariat and the global community are launching the #OzoneHeroes campaign. A public engagement campaign to celebrate the international agreement’s success in protecting Earth against ozone depletion and mitigating climate change.

The campaign seeks to inspire the same collaborative energy that propelled the Montreal Protocol’s mission and led to its continued success in protecting all life on Earth.

The campaign storyline is centered around a partnership with Marvel Comics, the company behind some of the world’s most beloved superheroes. Through this partnership, we have created an audience journey that follows Iron Man and the Guardians of the Galaxy in a Marvel-produced comic as they discover humans are the superheroes who solved the global issue of ozone depletion.

The story features campaign champions as superheroes and drives the audience to the #OzoneHeroes website (www.ozoneheroes.org), where people can take a quiz to discover their superpower. This serves to remind people that our human qualities are what equip us to solve the world’s most pressing problems and that we are all #OzoneHeroes.

The campaign will commence, 15 September , on the eve of World Ozone Day in Montreal, Canada, at a global launch event to be presided over by Canada’s Minister of Environment and Climate Change Catherine McKenna, the European Union Commissioner for Climate Action and Energy Miguel Arias Cañete, myself and attended by UN representatives, scientists, policymakers, environmentalists and special guests.

We are pleased to share various communication materials for the campaign, which we kindly request you to disseminate widely through your networks. They include a backgrounder and a presentation on the campaign, social media visuals and messages and a press release. These materials are available at: https://ozoneheroes.org/downloads

Video messages from the United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres, UN Environment Executive Director Erik Solheim and the Deputy Executive Director Ibrahim Thiaw are available at the following links:

In addition, the Secretary-General’s written message in the six official UN languages is attached for wider dissemination: