The UN 2023 Water Conference will take place at UN Headquarters in New York, 22-24 March 2023, co-hosted by Tajikistan and the Netherlands. The UN organised an online global stakeholder consultation to compile views, experiences and proposals from non-governmental organizations and all interested stakeholders on the potential themes for the United Nations 2023 Water Conference Interactive Dialogues. The online […]
From Reuters Negotiations on an ambitious global biodiversity deal to halt or reverse nature loss closed in Switzerland on Tuesday (29 March), with countries agreeing to little more than further talks in June. The Geneva meeting of around 1,000 negotiators from 164 countries was meant to be the last before the postponed U.N. Convention on […]
It was World Water Day on 22nd March, with a special focus on Groundwater. Most of Europe’s drinking water and a significant proportion of water used in irrigation come from groundwater. A European Environment Agency (EEA) briefing, published on World Water Day, provides a European overview of this key resource that is under increasing pressure […]
The United Nations failed to finalise a landmark treaty to preserve the biodiversity of the high seas – the 60% of the ocean beyond any nation’s jurisdiction. Observers, though, expect an agreement to be reached by year’s end as pressure builds to protect marine life from the growing impacts of climate change, overfishing and pollution, reports Bloomberg. The two-week meeting […]
The fourth session of the Intergovernmental Conference on Sustainable Use of Marine Biodiversity of Areas Beyond National Jurisdiction (also known as the BBNJ or High Seas Treaty), begins this week and runs to 18 March at the UN in New York. The UK Prime Minister announced in February that the country will be joining the High Ambition Coalition on […]
The United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said in a statement this week that the new “Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report is an atlas of human suffering and a damning indictment of failed climate leadership. With fact upon fact, this report reveals how people and the planet are getting clobbered by climate change.” In […]
The much-anticipated talks on a potential ‘Plastic pact’ at UNEA 5 has produced a treaty on plastic waste which has been described as ‘historic’. We covered the run up to the talks in detail over previous weeks. There were reports late in the day that that manufacturers had been lobbying to weaken the treaty proposal, as […]
Reducing use of plastic, made from oil and gas, has implications for the climate as well as pollution levels, Inger Andersen, head of the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) has said. More than 100 nations convening in Nairobi are expected to take the first steps toward establishing a historic global treaty to tackle the plastic crisis […]