23 Mar 2022

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 […]

22 Mar 2022

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 […]

08 Mar 2022

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 […]

03 Mar 2022

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 […]

03 Mar 2022

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 […]

01 Mar 2022

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 […]

22 Feb 2022

Global survey sees ‘nearly nine in 10 people supporting a UN plastic pollution treaty but will governments follow?’ As we covered recently, the Fifth Session of the United Nations Environment Assembly takes place online and in Nairobi at the end of February 2022. A key element of the summit will be the potential for a […]