When leaders gather in New York on 22-24 March for the first major UN Water Conference in almost 50 years, the world must not miss the opportunity to secure greater cooperation on shared waters – which account for some 60% of global freshwater flow – as a prerequisite to address the global water crisis.
Today, following the example of several countries in the region, Niger officially confirmed its desire to accede to the United Nations Convention on the Protection and Use of Transboundary Watercourses and International Lakes, more commonly known as the Water Convention. This upcoming accession is a decisive step for the region as it will bring Lake Chad fully under the Convention's legal framework.
In response to the huge impacts on the environment of the war in Ukraine, the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) and partners including UNEP, OECD, UNDP, UNIDO, the World Bank and OSCE are joining forces though an inter-agency group to coordinate the assessment of environmental damage.
While the impacts of air pollution on vegetation and crops are sometimes overlooked, they can take a high toll on food production. As the food and energy crises have recently shown the vulnerability of our food systems, the impacts of air pollution on agricultural yields and food production should be looked at carefully.
Joint efforts to harmonize data collection, strengthen monitoring and data exchange on water quality, develop early warning systems on water pollution at transboundary waters and improve collection and sharing of data on transboundary aquifers are needed for effective regional cooperation in Central Asia. These are the messages of the Regional Workshop on Monitoring, Assessment and Information Sharing in Transboundary Basins in Central Asia which took place on 1 and 2 February 2023 in Astana.
While Uzbekistan has improved its environmental performance in line with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) related to water and sanitation (SDG 6) and forests and tree cover loss (SDG targets 15.1, 15.2, 15.3), significant challenges remain related to air quality (SDG 11.6), water resources and wastewater treatment (SDG 6), and environmental health and biodiversity (SDG 15).
Updated guidance published today by the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) will help governments to strengthen biodiversity monitoring as a basis for sharpened biodiversity protection policies across all sectors.
The guidance is the first of its kind to build on the historic Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework agreed at the 15th Conference of Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity (COP-15) in December 2022.
The upcoming meetings of the Transport, Health and Environment Pan-European Programme (THE PEP) Partnership on Active Mobility and the Partnership on Sustainable Tourism Mobility will focus on challenges in promoting and developing policies for walking and cycling, as well as exchange views on sustainable mobility in tourism.
At its seventy-seventh meeting (Geneva, 13–16 December 2022), the Compliance Committee of the UNECE Convention on Access to Information, Public Participation in Decision-Making and Access to Justice in Environmental Matters (Aarhus Convention) invited fourteen Parties to attend open sessions to discuss the plans of action they were requested by the Meeting of the Parties to submit by 1 July 2022.
In the past years, Central Asia has been facing major climate-change related challenges – drought, floods, desertification, sandstorms, extreme cold and heat spells – and many more. Not only have these affected rural areas, but cities have been suffering, too. Accentuated by increased traffic volumes, economic growth and pressures from competing sectors such as real estate, cities have not always been able to align green goals with reality.