Environment and Climate Change
Environmental champion
We have reached an essential turning point in our journey to save the planet as we know it. More than 175 global leaders have now signed onto the historic climate agreement reached in Paris last December. Having been at the UN for the signing event on April 22nd I am filled with hope – but I’m also fighting a growing sense of dread.
Climate and social justice
There is a tendency in the public debate on climate change to present the use and development of green technologies as a miracle solution or panacea. We often forget one aspect: it is crucial to ensure that their development goes hand in hand with social justice. “The realization that it is not just global warming that we are dealing with but global warming in an unequal and unjust world has yet to sink in” according to Thiagarajan Jayaraman. Without equality and equity – in other words without peace and security – we cannot effectively fight climate change the Indian climate policy expert insists.
Managing the global commons
Here’s a prediction: planetary intelligence could emerge on Earth by 2050. “Hold on” you might say “that has emerged already right? Homo Sapiens.” No. What we have is a technologically advanced civilization. There is a subtle difference.
Hope from the hills
Kenya's Chyulu Hills host not just rich wildlife and beautiful landscapes but a groundbreaking partnership to conserve biodiversity and combat climate change between its people and the Maasai Wilderness Conservation Trust.
UNEP at work. The big picture
Everyone in the environmental community recognizes the urgent challenges facing the planet – but how do you spread the word to a truly global audience?
Green innovation
The need to strike a balance between increasing demand for natural resources and environmental sustainability has opened new opportunities for Malaysia to grow economically. Under its eleventh economic plan 2016-2020 a green economy – one that aims to reduce ecological risks and address resource scarcities – has been identified as one of the main drivers for development. In line with this new approach emphasis is given to innovation for creating more environmentally friendly industries to enable the growth to take place. Thus eco-innovation is to be nurtured in the spirit of this green economy to support attaining the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) especially those related to responsible consumption and production and action on climate change.
Greening cities
Climate change is the greatest threat facing our planet. The leaders of the world’s great cities recognize that fact and are taking urgent action. But mayors need strong allies to deliver the transformations needed to create sustainable green cities of the future. There is no greater partner for our campaign to save the planet than the Global Environment Facility.
The Global Environment Facility Partnership
Climate change and education
Educating on climate change and sustainable development issues is a necessity. In Latin America there are some promising experiments being carried out that deserve to be replicated both in the entire region and on other continents. There are some aspects however that are being neglected.
时事: 曼徳拉的南非: 是现实,还是遥远的梦想?
UNEP at work. Women, water and peace
The Darfur region of Sudan is no stranger to violence. More than a decade of conflict has driven millions of people from their homes and many have settled in North Darfur’s Wadi El Ku one of the region’s largest seasonal riverbeds.
The Global Environment Facility at work. Oyster openings
Life can be hard in The Gambia – and even harder for the women who harvest oysters a local delicacy and key source of protein in the West African country’s swamps and wetlands.
Being accountable
The Global Environment Facility is a knowledge-based organization in which evaluation is central to accountability results and learning. For it to be truly useful it must respond to changes both in the external landscape in which the Facility operates and in internal modus operandi. During the Facility’s 7th Replenishment process the Independent Evaluation Office is completing its sixth Comprehensive Evaluation under the theme ‘the Global Environment Facility in the Changing Landscape of Environmental Finance’. All such replenishments have been accompanied by an overall performance study and as previously the purpose of the Comprehensive Evaluation is to provide solid evaluative evidence to inform the negotiations gauging the results and impact of the Facility’s work through a wide mix of methodologies. The Office is pioneering state-of-the-art geospatial methods that allow us to measure environmental change over longer periods of time both before and after project implementation and to compare project sites with matched control locations.
Rescuing rainforests
Maps of the Brazilian Amazon in 2000 and 2010 show unmistakable signs of dramatic change. Indigenous lands and several categories of protected areas now occupy millions of hectares forming a consolidated landscape of conservation. But it might not have been so.
Zoom: Arab youth: Architects of their future
French photographer Yan Bighetti de Flogny was in Pakistan when in the course of a conversation with a hotel owner he learned of the existence of Ibn Battuta the fourteenth-century Moroccan explorer. Unfairly little-known Ibn Battuta is “perhaps the greatest traveller who has ever lived” as an article in the Courier of August- September 1981 tells us.