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What do we know about our exposure to hazardous substances by using cosmetics, food, toys, furniture, electronics, building materials and other everyday items? Do we know what hazardous substances, and how much, are being released into the environment from industrial or agricultural sites close…
By 2050, almost three quarters of the world’s population will call urban areas home. We are clearly living in a Century of Cities. There are striking urban and housing challenges, in both developed and developing countries. To draw attention to these, UNECE, in cooperation with the Cittadellarte…
UNECE will celebrate the International Day of Older Persons, on 1 October, with a panel discussion and an interactive exhibition to learn more about population ageing and find out how societies can respond to changing demographic realities and why our own good attitude towards ageing matters.The…
In its follow-up to the Rio+20 process, Kazakhstan took the landmark decision to transition towards a sustainable development model. The Kazakh "Green Economy Concept" establishes a completely new development paradigm for the country.To support the transition, a four-year, €7.1-million…
The commitment for economically advanced countries to provide 0.7% of their gross national income (GNI) in the form of official development assistance (ODA) has been reaffirmed in many international agreements over the yearsi . It has been used to measure progress under Millennium Development Goal…
The challenges posed by climate change to Central Asia, the likelihood of more frequent compound water-energy-food crises and the growing strain on the shared water resources of the region due to economic development and demographic growth require more intensive joint efforts by the countries of…
UNECE and the Renewable Energy Policy Network for the 21st Century (REN21), in close cooperation with the International Energy Agency (IEA), have joined forces to develop the UNECE Renewable Energy Status Report, which aims at closing the data and information gap as well as tracking future…
Innovation, in the long run, is the single most important driver of economic growth. This is true for the most advanced economies, where innovation means the commercialization of cutting-edge technologies. It is also true for less advanced economies, where innovation primarily means the adoption…
Many of us might not be familiar with the term statistical business register (SBR), however, a large amount of the economic information we digest daily relies on it. This includes statistics about establishments and enterprises and their activities, business demography and entrepreneurship…
UNECE’s policy guidelines, standards and regulations will support countries in achieving most of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to be approved in a few weeks by the United Nations General Assembly. The Goals supported by UNECE cover a wide range of areas including, among others:…
During its first Economic Cooperation and Trade Week (31 August- 4 September), UNECE will be looking, from different perspectives and through three separate events, at how trade, innovation and public-private partnerships (PPP) can be used by governments to support sustainable development.From…
The push for a global agreement on climate change is increasing like the pace of a high-speed train. The next stop is the Paris Climate Conference in December, where 196 countries need to get on board the new climate agreement. To navigate climate action along those tracks, policy makers will…
Greece, Ireland, Italy, Portugal and Spain are some of the UNECE member countries that were most severely affected by the 2008 financial crisis. Amongst these countries, Greece, Ireland, Portugal and Spain all experienced modest employment growth in 2014 compared to the year before.Employment grew…
Governments often use Public-Private Partnerships (PPP) to conduct health projects without ensuring consistency with their overall health policy.  This can lead to problems in policy implementation. For example, if a country initiates an expensive PPP hospitals programme, the risk is that…
For the first time, UNECE has launched a tablet version of its Annual Report, available to download from Google Play.  It will also be available soon on the App store. The publication summarizes UNECE achievements in 2014 and presents the main challenges for 2015. From cleaner air to safer…
It is widely accepted that human activity has altered the balance of nutrients in ecosystems and has led to a nutrient overload. This has led to soil degradation, biodiversity loss and pollution of freshwaters. Major nutrients important for plant growth are carbon and nitrogen, among others.…
Thanks to the committed Aarhus Parties and stakeholders the Aarhus principles are guiding international decision-making on matters relating to the environment across the globe. A number of meetings related to the Aarhus Convention were held in Geneva from 15 to 19 June 2015. The Working Group of…
In Central Asia, increasing regional cooperation on trade is key to realizing the region’s potential as an integrated regional market and as a nexus connecting the European and Asian markets. In order to discuss and identify potential avenues for reinforcing regional cooperation, countries from…
In the Republic of Moldova some 309,000 people are either employers or own account workers (self-employed without employees).  Only 120,000 of these (39 per cent) are women.  Currently, this is the closest we can come to measuring the phenomenon of entrepreneurship, which in fact is a…
The Georgian Parliament hosted today a conference on ageing policy to support the integration of ageing-related issues in public policies and programmes. The debates, largely based on the findings of the Road Map for Mainstreaming Ageing in Georgia, developed in 2014 by UNECE in collaboration…
Several countries from outside the UNECE region expressed interest in acceding to the UNECE Convention on the Protection and Use of Transboundary Watercourses and International Lakes (Water Convention) at the tenth meeting of the Working Group on Integrated Water Resources Management, held on 24…
Customs-2-Customs (C2C) electronic exchange of information could greatly support risk assessment for transit operations and, ultimately, facilitate legitimate trade, improve and secure border crossing as well as reduce related costs. This was one of the findings of a workshop jointly organized…
So much has been said and written about Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), but now it is time to act. SDGs will be adopted by the General Assembly in September 2015 and the Statistical Community is expected to start measuring SDGs as of 2016. The universal character of these 17 goals means…
“Global retailers, brands and manufacturers who have outsourced their production have turned economics on its head”, says Professor Gary Gereffi, one of the experts that will gather in Geneva on 7-9 July for a meeting on Measuring Global Production hosted by UNECE . Leading statistical experts…
A study recently published in the magazine Environmental Science and Technology suggests that a strong global programme to mitigate fine particulate matter (PM2.5) or “respirable particles” — a major component of outdoor air pollution — could avoid as many as 750,000 deaths annually in the world…