10 May 2022

UN-Habitat, the Busan Metropolitan City of the Republic of Korea, and OCEANIX have unveiled the design of the world’s first prototype sustainable floating city. OCEANIX Busan aims to provide breakthrough technology for coastal cities facing severe land shortages that are compounded by climatic threats. The challenge is massive: two out of every five people in […]

28 Apr 2022

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 […]

07 Apr 2022

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 […]

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 […]