Home/Posts Tagged ‘UN’
Posts Tagged ‘UN’
Climate Change, Politics, Pollution, Jun 20th, 2012,
The UN women’s group doesn’t like it. The UN children’s group doesn’t like it. Greenpeace hates it. So do Oxfam and a coalition of NGO’s known as the High Seas Alliance. I’m talking about the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development, aka Rio+20, taking place 20 years after the seminal Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The agreement draft is not legally binding (it was never planned to be) and apparently has no clearly defined goals or timetables to tackle pressing issues like food security, water and energy. The leaders of many major countries are of course heralding its…
Tags: Rio+20, summit, UN
Green living, Pollution, Mar 26th, 2012,
The world is facing a mounting crisis. In recent years we have experienced a combination of a global financial crisis, a food crisis, volatile oil prices, accelerating ecosystem degradation and an increasing number of climate-induced extreme weather events. These multiple and inter-related crises call into question the ability of a growing human population to live peacefully and sustainably on this planet, and demand the urgent attention governments and citizens around the world. –Earth Summit 2012 website The UN Conference on Sustainable Development, aka Earth Summit 2012, aka Rio+20, takes place in Rio de Janeiro Brazil from June 20-22nd. Rio+20 is…
Tags: Brazil, Earth Summit, Guanabara, Rio de Janeiro, Rio+20, sustainable development, UN
Climate Change, Health, Politics, Pollution, Mar 16th, 2012,
Just as the UN published figures that global access to clean water has improved, already surpassing their goals set for 2015, a new OECD report predicts that air pollution is set to become the leading environmental cause of premature death. So the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, whose raison d’être is economic growth, is warning that industrialization, which has worked hand in glove with economic growth and market-based economics, is killing more and more people by polluting the air. Previous UN figures showed that as the Global population increases, more urbanization occurs and the proportion of urban inhabitants without…
Tags: clean water, OECD, Pollution, report, sanitation, UN
Climate Change, Politics, Jan 30th, 2012,
United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki Moon’s High-Level Panel on Global Sustainability is presenting its report today in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia to address global problems of growing inequality, economic instability and environmental crisis. The report, entitled Resilient People, Resilient Planet: A Future Worth Choosing ‘contains 56 recommendations to put sustainable development into practice and to mainstream it into economic policy as quickly as possible’. From the report: The signposts are clear: We need to change dramatically, beginning with how we think about our relationship to each other, to future generations, and to the eco-systems that support us. Our mission…
Tags: fossil fuels, global, report, Resilient People Resilient Planet, sustainability, UN
Climate Change, Politics, Jul 22nd, 2011,
What does the UN Security Council have to do with climate change? Last year the UN Secretary for the Convention on Biological Diversity, Ahmed Djoghlaf, warned that population growth, urbanization, agriculture and climate change increase poverty and decrease security. He may not have been talking about war, but the links between armed conflicts and water and food shortages, as well as population movements due to natural disasters, are not so hard to see. Food prices have been associated with climate change and NATO has already made the connection between issues of global security and the global environmental crisis. Now Achim…
Tags: Achim Steiner, Climate change, famine, link, security, Somalia, UN, war, world peace
Climate Change, Conservation, Wildlife & Flora, Apr 14th, 2011,
Environmentalists, NGOs, relatively progressive governments and the UN made a lot of noise about climate change a couple of years ago. Nothing really happened. Then 2010 was hailed by the United Nations as the “Year of Biodiversity” in order to draw awareness to the catastrophic loss of natural resources, which global ecosystems (including humanity) depend on for little things like livelihood and survival. But comfort, convenience and promises of wealth trump doomsday scenarios every time. Just like with climate change, governments are failing to significantly act on biodiversity loss. Large corporations couldn’t give a toss, because they make money from…
Tags: biodiversity, biodiversity loss, Climate change, UK, UN
Climate Change, Pollution, Feb 24th, 2011,
A new UN report concentrates on the warming effects of black carbon (soot) and ground-level ozone like methane. Both are considered “short-lived climate forcers”, which have more immediate effects on temperatures than CO2. Therefore limiting their production would also have a more immediate impact on the climate. In the past this strategy has been largely ignored in favor of plans to limit CO2 emissions, which have so far proved ineffective and lack the immediacy of results that can be so problematic in terms of politics and public opinion. The Guardian reports: Soot is a particular problem because when it falls…
Tags: black carbon, co2, emissions, ground-level ozone, Health, methane, UN, warming
Climate Change, Science & Technology, Nov 26th, 2010,
News items about carbon emissions, global warming and heating trends of our planet are hot these days. No surprise there, as scientists and world leaders are getting ready for the next round of United Nations climate talks next week in Cancun. Unfortunately, as I already pointed out before, nobody is expecting anything remotely exciting to come out of COP16. With a little bit of luck, some regulations about deforestation and some REDD financing schemes will see the light at the end of yet another useless gathering. In the meantime scientists are feeding us with more and more alarming numbers about…
Tags: 2010 hottest year on record, Climate change, climate conference, climate talks, cop16, global warming, UN, united nations, warming temperatures
Climate Change, Green living, Nature, Politics, Oct 27th, 2010,
You may not know this, but since the 1970’s, more than 40 percent of the earth’s species (plants and animals alike) disappeared from the face of our planet. So when the UN declared 2010 the international “Year of Biodiversity” it was with a clear message: to help save what’s left of our world’s ecosystems. UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon stated: “Biological diversity underpins ecosystem functioning… its continued loss, therefore, has major implications for current and future human well-being.” Unfortunately there are still too many people that believe that biodiversity is “a kind of washing powder”, as this article from the BBC…
Tags: 2020, access and benefit sharing, biodiversity, Nagoya, Rio de Janeiro, summit, UN, united nations
Climate Change, Politics, Oct 6th, 2010,
The UN climate talks currently underway in Tianjin, China are smaller, more subdued and well organized when compared to the major international event at Copenhagen last December. But in the end they are still about China vs. the United States. Tianjin is being seen as an opportunity to find some common ground before the UN summit in Cancún, Mexico later this year, but the chief US envoy is frustrated at the level and speed of progress taking place. Instead of actual progress he sees backtracking. From a report in the Guardian: What is frustrating in these negotiations is to see…
Tags: China, climate, Climate change, copenhagen, low expectations, talks, Tianjin, UN, US
Climate Change, Politics, Oct 4th, 2010,
This week the final UN climate talks leading up to the summit in Cancun Mexico will be held in Tianjin, China, a large manufacturing city of over 12 million people. In the aftermath of a failed climate summit in Copenhagen last December, hope for any binding treaty between nations is slim. Kyoto part 2 seems like a politically impossible pipedream. Good news for the fossil fuel industry, bad news for most everyone else. If we believe the scientists, that is. From a Reuters article: Scientists say the world is on track for temperatures to rise well beyond 2 degrees Celsius,…
Tags: Cancun, China, climate, summit, Tianjin, UN
Climate Change, Health, Politics, Wildlife & Flora, Sep 25th, 2010,
According to recent estimates, species are disappearing at 1,000 times the natural rate due to human activity and climate change. At a UN summit on Wednesday in New York, world leaders attended a meeting to discuss how to halt biodiversity and habitat loss. In a situation that mirrored the gridlock at the climate change talks last December in Copenhagen, developing countries, led by China, argued for payments from rich countries to encourage the protection of forests and other crucial habitats in poor nations which contain natural biological resources. Such a mechanism is not contained in the currently proposed Intergovernmental Science…
Tags: biodiversity, crisis, food, loss, meeting, UN
Climate Change, Politics, Wildlife & Flora, Aug 19th, 2010,
In advance of a major UN meeting for the Convention on Biological Diversity, the organization’s secretary-general, Ahmed Djoghlaf, recently warned of the threats posed against the natural world – and life itself – by population growth, urbanization, agriculture and climate change. Despite these increasing threats and an ongoing mass extinction in the natural world, which is almost 1,000 times the normal ‘background’ rate, governments are simply not acting to preserve biodiversity and the overall health of the planet. No country has met its targets to protect nature. We are losing biodiversity at an unprecedented rate. If current levels [of destruction]…
Tags: Ahmed, biodiversity, biological, change, climate, convention, diversity, Djoghlaf, Nature, rainforest, threats, UN
Climate Change, Green living, Aug 2nd, 2010,
As an alternative to cutting meat consumption in order to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) is considering the promotion of insects as a food source. The idea comes from a UN policy paper by a Belgian scientist at the University of Wageningen named Arnold Van Huis, who points out that most of the world already eats insects. In meat-rich Western diets – which are growing throughout the rest of the world and thereby causing emissions to increase – eating insects is somewhat taboo, but eating shrimp, which are very similar to insects, is considered…
Tags: beetle, citrus, emissions, farming, food, gas, greenhouse, insects, livestock, longhorn, meat, shrubs, trees, UK, UN, Van Huis
Climate Change, Science & Technology, Jul 24th, 2010,
Despite the recent economic downturn, the green energy market has grown to the point of eclipsing fossil fuel – at least in terms of the creation of new power capacity in Europe and the United States. In 2009 renewables accounted for over 50% of new power capacity in the US and 60% in the Europe. Green power also grew globally. From an article in Red Herring magazine: Nearly 80 GW of renewable power capacity was added globally, including 31 GW of hydro and 48 GW of non-hydro capacity. Wind power and solar PV additions totaled a record high of 38…
Tags: capacity, China, energy, global, Green, investment, North Sea, power, renewable, Solar, UK, UN, wind
Conservation, Politics, Videos & Documentaries, Jul 22nd, 2010,
The Economist recently featured an interview with ‘green economist’ Pavan Sukhdev on their regular segment ‘Tea with The Economist’. Pavan Sukhdev is a study leader for The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity study (TEEB), a report commissioned by the G8+5 and funded by the European Union. He is special advisor and head of the UN Environment Program’s (UNEP) Green Economy Initiative, also funded by the EU/EC and Norway. In the following video interview, Sukhdev discusses natural capital and economic as well as political solutions to preserving and encouraging biodiversity an environmentally conscious business practices. Pavan Sukhdev on the green economy…
Tags: biodiversity, capital, Economist, economy, environmental, Green, initiative, natural, Pavan, Sukhdev, TEEB, UN, UNEP
Conservation, Nature, Politics, Jul 14th, 2010,
Economist Pavan Sukhdev is the independent study leader of a European Union research project, The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity (TEEB) hosted by the UN Environment Program (UNEP). Sukhdev has argued that current economic models do not sufficiently address the true value of nature and natural resources outside of commerce. He is a proponent of the concept of ‘natural capital’, in which a value is placed on food, clean water, clean air, forests, etc, but without commodifying nature. Poor rural populations who live outside of consumption-based economies value nature because they depend on it to survive rather than because they…
Tags: biodiversity, Business, corporation, economic, ecosystem, Europe, European, forestry, forests, government, natural, Nature, resources, UN, value
Climate Change, Nature, Politics, Wildlife & Flora, Jun 9th, 2010,
2010 is the International Year of Biodiversity, under the auspices of the UN and the Convention on Biological Diversity. This week in Busan, South Korea, governments will meet to discuss the establishment of the Intergovernmental Panel of Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services, modeled after the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Environmental groups and the governments of France and Japan champion the creation of such an organization. The need for recognition and knowledge about how humanity benefits from and depends on ecosystems is crucial to future development, sustainability and the integrity of the natural world. Simply put, we cannot exist by…
Tags: biodiversity, change, Climate change, ecosystem, EU, Europe, European, intergovernmental, platform, policy, UN
Climate Change, Politics, Science & Technology, Jun 3rd, 2010,
A UN report entitled ‘Assessing the Environmental Impacts of Consumption and Production’, released Wednesday, states that eating less meat and dairy is necessary to avoid catastrophic effects of climate change, global hunger and energy shortages. From an article in the Guardian: As the global population surges towards a predicted 9.1 billion people by 2050, western tastes for diets rich in meat and dairy products are unsustainable, says the report from United Nations Environment Programme’s (UNEP) international panel of sustainable resource management. There’s been a bit of a back and forth regarding how much the meat and dairy industries contribute to…
Tags: Climate change, consumption, dairy, emissions, environment, environmental, food, global warming, impact, meat, production, report, UN, unsustainable, vegetarian
Climate Change, Nature, Politics, May 28th, 2010,
At a UN climate conference in Oslo, Norway this week, nations agreed on an increase in aid from rich to poor countries to protect the Earth’s forests and curb global carbon emissions. UN figures state that deforestation and forest degradation are responsible for 17% global emissions. Preserving forests is widely regarded as the least expensive way to cut these emissions. From a Reuters report: The Oslo Climate and Forest Conference, attended by representatives of 52 countries, agreed on a non-binding framework to funnel aid promised by the rich world and set up monitoring standards to ensure money flows are based…
Tags: agreement, carbon, climate, conference, deforestation, degradation, emissions, forest, forests, global, IndonesiaI, Norway, Oslo, plan, REDD, UN
