UN Environment has worked with over 52 countries, strengthened dozens of institutions and built the capacity of over 100 law and governance professionals over the last 12 months.
Please click here to see a map of some of our results.
POLLUTION
Unhealthy environments cause one quarter of all deaths in young children, with more deaths occurring in children under the age five. Doctors are referring to this crisis as a 'silent pandemic".
UN Environment is finalizing a major report on pollution that will be launched at the UN Environment Assembly in December. The report will outline some of the ways that governments can address pollution, and describe the legal responses required to mitigate the threat of human exposure to hazardous substances.
Confronting the Ultimate Cost of Pollution
Every year, 1.7 million children die because they live in unhealthy environments. UN Environment is working with the Global Alliance to Eliminate Lead Paint and to provide guidance to legislators in the design of laws to ban lead in paint. Through our support for the Basel, Rotterdam, Stockholm and Minamata conventions, UN Environment is supporting better regulation of hazardous substances that have a particularly severe impact on the health of children. Read more...
Tackling a Toxic Legacy
From the 1930s to the 1980s, Polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) were produced in large quantities. The production of PCBs is now illegal, but a recent study by UN Environment revealed that 14 million tonnes of the substance are still in use around the world. UN Environment, through the Stockholm Convention, seeks to phase out the use of PCBs by 2025 and ensure final disposal of the substance by 2028. Read more...
Governing for a Greener and Cleaner Future
UN Environment is working to ensure that as many people as possible understand the fundamentals of good environmental governance. That is why, with the United Nations Institute for Training and Research, we have launched the ‘Introduction to Environmental Governance’ online course. The course will help raise awareness of how international environmental agreements and policies are made, complied with, and enforced. The course will also take participants through the different levels of governance, from national jurisdictions to state and international level. Read more...
Making our Chemical Future Clean and Green
Chemicals play a role in almost every part of our lives. They preserve food, clean our clothes, fight disease and enable the functioning of modern technologies. But despite their usefulness, chemicals can also be very harmful to human health and the environment. UN Environment is a hub for chemicals and waste conventions, which are working to find alternatives for numerous hazardous substances. Read more...
Greening the Desert
Most wastewater in Africa is not treated or recycled. But in Ouarzazate, Morocco, where UN Environment is coordinating a project to water drylands, wastewater is being recycled to plant 635 hectares with trees which will act as a protective buffer between the city and the desert. The wastewater is collected from households and filtered in a series of lagoons, before being pumped to the project site using solar power. Read more...
CLIMATE CHANGE
For effective implementation of the Paris Agreement, climate law-making is essential. UN Environment supports the review and reform of existing laws to enable countries to consider climate change proactively and address climate risks. We are working to help ensure that this work involves all stakeholders, as all sectors of the economy and society are at risk from climate change.
Study Identifies Climate Litigation Trends
A new study has identified key trends in worldwide climate change litigation, including a rise in cases that seek to hold governments to account for climate-related commitments and more litigation expected from the Global South as developing countries look to the law to address the growing threat of climate change. The Status of Climate Change Litigation - A Global Review by UN Environment and Columbia Law School’s Sabin Center for Climate Change Law presents the findings from the most up-to-date global climate change litigation survey. Read more...
Toolkit to Help Countries Implement the Paris Agreement
UN Environment, the Commonwealth Secretariat and the climate change secretariat, are launching a new toolkit to provide countries with a comprehensive source of methodologies, good practice, and knowledge sharing on climate legislation. The toolkit will further aid the development of laws relating to climate change and facilitate access to all the required resources. Read more...
Wildlife Law Makers find Common Ground
UN Environment enhances the capacities of countries to establish and enforce legal and institutional frameworks to address environmental crime, including illegal wildlife trade. During a recent meeting in Bangkok legal experts from 22 African and Asia-Pacific countries advanced their common understanding of the key legal elements and provisions needed to tackle the multi-billion-dollar illegal trade in wildlife and forest products. Read more...
UN Environment Supports Development of Kenya Wildlife Policy
UN Environment works with countries to support the development and implementation of national, regional and global legal instruments and policies to combat illegal transnational environmental activities. UN Environment offered its expertise on legal and policy mechanisms to the Kenyan government in drafting and finalizing the country's wildlife policy .Read more...
HEALTH
More than 100 constitutions recognize the human right to a healthy environment. UN Environment works in partnership with human rights bodies including The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, and the UN Special Rapporteur on human rights and the environment to identify and promote good practices and policies that make a positive impact upon human rights and health.
Do we Have a Right to Healthy Environment?
More than 100 constitutions recognize the human right to a healthy environment. So why do environmental degradation and natural resource exploitation continue to plague the planet? This was the question put to two renowned judicial champions of the environment, Justice Antonio Benjamin and Justice Ragnhild Noer, at a live Q&A session on environmental justice hosted by UN Environment on 5 July. Read more...
Make Mercury History
Mercury, an ubiquitous metal that has broad uses in everyday objects, as well as processes such as chlorine and plastics productions, has the ability to profoundly affect the health of people, especially the women and unborn children, and the broader environment. Through the Minamata Convention, UN Environment aims to protect human health and the environment from the adverse effects of mercury, by putting control measures on its use, handling, and even banning new mercury mines. Read more...
New Housing to Cut Malaria Transmission
Despite a 50 percent reduction in malaria infections in sub-Saharan Africa over the last fifteen years, almost half of the world's population still remains at risk of the deadly disease. That is why in partnership with the World Health Organisation (WHO), UN Environment recently launched a project to strengthen national capacities for innovative implementation of integrated vector management for disease prevention and control in the WHO African region. Read more...
One-Pasifika - Biosafety
UN Environment works towards enhancing the capacities of countries to more effectively participate in and facilitate sustainable implementation of environmental conventions. In the Pacific region, UN Environment has enhanced capacities of countries in the region to effectively participate in the Biosafety Clearing House, towards sustainable implementation of the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety by 2020 and beyond. Read more...
ENVIRONMENTAL SECURITY
There is an inextricable link between the security of humans and the environment, which is becoming increasingly multifaceted, and needs to be seen as an essential component of international environmental policy.
UN Environment is working with the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights and the UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights and the Environment to support and strengthen environmental policy making, especially in the areas of environmental protection and management.
Strengthening Environmental Enforcement
Recently in South Korea UN Environment strengthened cooperation at national levels between customs and environmental authorities in the Asia and Pacific. Read more...
Strengthening Customs Enforcement
UN Environment enhances the capacity of customs and other relevant border control officers to monitor and facilitate the legal trade and to detect and prevent illegal trade of environmentally sensitive commodities, covered by relevant conventions and multilateral environmental agreements. Read more...
Environmental Law in Judicial Training
UN Environment is working with countries to integrate environmental law in learning institutions, including judicial training programmes. Recently, UN Environment and the South African Judicial Education Institute equipped legal professionals with skills for delivering training on environmental law through different methods and approaches and to improve their competencies on developing environmental law training curricula for judicial officers.. Read more...
Global Judicial Institute on the Environment
The Global Judicial Institute on the Environment was established at the first World Environmental Law Congress in April 2016. Its aim is to support the role of courts and tribunals in applying and enforcing environmental laws and in promoting the environmental rule of law and the fair distribution of environmental benefits and burdens. UN Environment will assist judiciaries across its regions in determining how best to transfer and apply knowledge and experience and ensure that judicial approaches to environmental challenges become a model and norm. Read more...
UN Environment to Offer Law Scholarships
UN Environment is partnering with environmental and law institutions to offer environmental law scholarships, with the aim of advancing justice, governance and environmental sustainability. The China University of Political Science and Law has entered into a cooperation agreement with UN Environment to offer scholarships for Masters and Doctoral degrees on environmental law for students from the Global South. Read more...
Global Pact for the Environment Introduced
High-level politicians, international jurists and scholars convened in Paris on 23-24 June to finalize and launch the preliminary draft of the “Global Pact for the Environment” as a unifying covenant for fundamental environmental rights. Read more...
Information, Data and the Global Goals
UN Environment, through InforMEA, a knowledge management tool on Multilateral Environmental Agreements, provides users with access to more than 50 global and regional – environmental related treaties. Read more...
InforMEA - UN Environment Goes to School
UN Environment has begun showcasing the InforMEA platform to Deans, faculty heads and lecturers from African universities in an effort to integrate InforMEA in the curricula of various institutions of learning. Read more...
Helping African, Caribbean and Pacific Countries Achieve Environmental Goals
Developing countries are faced with a variety of obstacles that impede their ability to implement multilateral environmental agreements. UN Environment is supporting mainstreaming of the Global Goals and multilateral environmental agreements into National Biodiversity Strategies and Action Plans in the Caribbean region, and the development and review of a legislative and regulatory framework for persistent organic pollutants in Africa. Read more...
In the Media
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UN Environment is helping developing countries strengthen environmental governance
Asian and the African wildlife lawmakers are finding common approaches to tackling the illegal trade in wildlife
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niamh.brannigan[a]unep.org