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The Protocol on Pollutant Release and Transfer Registers (Protocol on PRTRs) sets international standards for reporting on pollutant releases from a range of economic activities, such as mineral industry operations, plastic production, waste and wastewater management or the rearing of poultry or…
Transparency in the environmental performance of economic activities and effective public access to environmental information, especially on products, are indispensable in addressing pressing environmental challenges. This also supports a just transition towards a green and circular economy,…
The Mediterranean Region, home to over 510 million people, is an important crossroads for economic, social and cultural exchanges between Europe, Africa, Asia and other continents. The region is rich in biodiversity, but has come under pressure due to the intensive exploitation of mineral resources…
In the UNECE region, the Fourth Cycle of Environmental Performance Reviews (EPR) kicks off with the review of Tajikistan, carried out for the fourth time under the leadership of UNECE.
A large, multidisciplinary team of international experts worked in Dushanbe from 6 to 15 November 2023,…
The European Commission has proposed a new legislation, the European Critical Raw Materials Act, to ensure a secure and sustainable supply of critical raw materials for the EU. The Act, on which the European Parliament and the European Council reached a provisional agreement on 13 November,…
Strong private sector engagement positively impacts the relevance, legitimacy, and credibility of national trade facilitation bodies (NTFBs) and encourages a business-centric approach to trade facilitation. Over the past several years, governments, donors and international organizations have…
Policy solutions for pressing problems like air pollution require sound data. Emission inventories can help in determining the major sources of air pollution in a given country.
As a result of integrated air pollution management strategies developed under the UNECE Convention on Long-range…
Understanding how pollutant emissions will evolve in the future is essential for designing effective clean air policies today while taking into account the available resources in a given country.
While air quality in the UNECE region has improved over the past few decades as a result of…
Central Asia has significant untapped potential to decarbonize its energy systems and accelerate the sustainable energy transition, including through renewable energy development and enhanced resource management. To help the region capitalize on these opportunities, UNECE, the United Nations…
UNECE support for the revision of the Georgian Mining Code Act is shaping the future of resource classification and estimation standards in Georgia. During a workshop in Tbilisi participants discussed how Georgian standards could play a crucial role in harmonizing with the global dimensions of the…
Clothing production has doubled in the past 15 years. In 2018, the fashion industry produced around 2.1 billion tons of greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) – 4% of the world’s total – leading to major environmental, health and social challenges. In 2020 in Europe, textile consumption had the third…
The ongoing repercussions of the COVID-19 pandemic, geopolitical instability, and elevated inflation rates continue to pose challenges to global trade, with the World Trade Organization (WTO)'s trade growth forecast now estimated at only 0.8% this year.
As the global trade landscape grapples…
The International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD), held in Cairo in 1994, set a bold new vision of the relationships between population, development, and individual rights and well-being. It recognized that population was not about numbers, but about people, and that individual…
Sound emission inventories are the first step for designing effective clean air policies as they provide information about the main sources and the most acute air pollution problems in a country.
Under the Convention on Long-range Transboundary Air Pollution (Air Convention), UNECE has therefore…
Taking up some of the main results of the recent review report, which assessed the effectiveness of the amended Protocol to Abate Acidification, Eutrophication and Ground-Level Ozone (Gothenburg Protocol) under the UNECE Convention on Long-range Transboundary Air Pollution, experts discussed…
Breathing clean air is a necessity for everyone and decent air quality is a shared responsibility that can only be achieved if we work together. This is what Member States in the UNECE region realized 45 years ago, when they started negotiating the first multilateral, legally binding treaty to cut…
The public and civil society have a crucial role to play in tackling key environmental challenges. To make the most of this potential, continued efforts are needed to uphold their rights to shape environmental decision-making.
To this end, the Working Group of the Parties to the Convention on…
Since September 2022, as part of “The Sustainability Pledge” initiative, UNECE has been working with fashion company Stella McCartney and its Cotton supplier SÖKTAS to trace a T-shirt made of jersey fabric through documentary evidence.
The UNECE blockchain platform allows to capture all actors…
For some time now, Uzbekistan has been engaged in various activities under the UNECE Convention on Access to Information, Public Participation in Decision-making and Access to Justice in Environmental Matters (Aarhus Convention).
An international round table entitled “Aarhus Convention: Effective…
As the global economy emerges from the COVID-19 pandemic and governments strengthen efforts to “build-back-better”, trade as an engine of growth has re-emerged in policy agendas. For developing countries and countries with economies in transition that are still in the process of accession to the…
Over two-thirds of Togo’s water resources are shared, notably through the Mono River basin (shared with Benin) and Volta River basin (shared with Benin, Burkina Faso, Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana and Mali), as well as aquifers in the coastal sedimentary basin (shared with Ghana, Benin and Nigeria).
In a…
Momentum is growing on the digitalization of the Middle Corridor, linking the European Union and Asia, through Central Asia, the Caucasus, Türkiye and Eastern Europe, through the use of UNECE and UN/CEFACT standards for digitalization of multimodal data and document exchange.
Representatives of…
To address the conclusions of the review of the amended Protocol to Abate Acidification, Eutrophication and Ground-Level Ozone (Gothenburg Protocol), as adopted by the Executive Body to the UNECE Convention on Long-range Transboundary Air Pollution in December 2022, further work is currently being…
Mining is an important sector and economic contributor in Central Asian countries due to their rich mineral base. However, the mining activities also generate huge amount of waste which can contain hazardous substances and must be safely stored in so-called tailings management facilities (TMFs).…
In the world grappling with the triple crisis, encompassing the COVID-19 pandemic, ongoing regional conflicts, and climate change, disruptions of global supply chains are becoming more evident, resulting in the global trade slowdown. More specifically, these challenges have led to a significant…