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August is wildfire season in many parts of the Northern Hemisphere. Many areas in the UNECE region, including North America, Siberia, and Mediterranean countries have experienced unusually hot and dry weather this year, and with that some of the biggest wildfires on record. Areas burned in Turkey…
By Ms. Olga Algayerova, UN Under-Secretary-General and Executive Secretary of UNECE, and Ms. Elisabete Quintas da Silva, Head of Department, Sustainable and Efficient Use of Resources Operational Programme, Government of Portugal, and Chair of the UNECE Committee on Environmental Policy.  This…
The heads of national statistical offices of 59 countries and 24 international organizations are gathering this week in Geneva and around the globe for the 69th plenary session of the Conference of European Statisticians, the decision-making body for statistical matters in the UNECE region and…
Setting the major directions to strengthen effective public participation and access to information and justice by 2025 was the focus of the twenty-fifth meeting of the Working Group of the Parties to the Convention on Access to Information, Public Participation in Decision-Making and Access to…
A team of expert labour statisticians is to be convened by UNECE for the Conference of European Statisticians, to investigate how to reflect new ways of working in the employment figures we use every day. Over the past year the work-from-home orders and business closure rules issued by many…
The importance of statistical information to help us cope with disasters has never been clearer than over the past year. As the Covid-19 pandemic has gripped the world, numbers have become our bread and butter. Yet the pandemic has also highlighted the challenges and imperfections in many systems; …
Mobility is a primary enabler of our economic and social life. However, despite its many benefits, the costs of mobility to societies around the world remain unacceptably high. These include greenhouse gas emissions (transport accounts for some 24% of global CO2 emissions, three quarters of which…
The extraction of raw materials worldwide has more than doubled since 1990 and could double again by 2060 in the absence of corrective policies. According to the UN International Resources Panel, resource extraction and processing account for 90% of global biodiversity loss and water stress impacts…
To reduce transmission of the novel coronavirus, Governments in the UNECE region introduced social distancing and other measures, which have often included restrictions on the freedoms of assembly and of movement. Consequently, there has been an impact on procedural rights of public participation…
Systemic deficiencies with regard to access to information, decision-making or compliance with environmental law can seriously threaten successful implementation of circular and green economy and sustainable development. Taking a case to court to advance a widely shared public interest remains an…
Olga Algayerova Women’s Day Blog On the occasion of the International Women’s Day, I would like to pay tribute to all women leaders, and all women and men, girls and boys, who are empowering women and girls to build a better future for all! The theme of this year’s International Women’s Day is…
Achieving equality between women and men is a core goal of governments and the international community. The frameworks that guide us towards this goal—the Sustainable Development Agenda and The Beijing Platform for Action, among others—emphasize that for equality to be achieved, women and men must …
As globalization increases the diversity of innovative ways of doing business around the world, economies become ever more interdependent. Multinational enterprise groups, or MNEs, have operations in several countries, so counting up their economic impacts entails looking across borders to gather…
Director General of Statistics Finland Marjo Bruun has chaired the Conference of European Statisticians (CES), UNECE’s statistical body, since 2016. As she retires from Statistics Finland at the end of this month, she reflects on how leading this international statistical work has broadened her…
UNECE is supporting Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, the Republic of Moldova and Ukraine to further enhance strategic environmental assessment (SEA) and transboundary environmental impact assessment (EIA) to prevent and mitigate damage to the environment and health from economic growth. A…
Risk is a part of our everyday lives. When we wear a helmet to ride a bike, for example, we accept a small inconvenience to reduce the risk of a fall or an accident. When a homeowner decides to retrofit their house, they incur a cost to shield against an earthquake or a flood. Faced with the COVID…
UNECE and the European Union continue to support pilot applications of the Strategic Environmental Assessments (SEA) in Belarus and Georgia in the framework of the European Union Water Initiative Plus programme for the Eastern Partnership Countries (EUWI+). SEA is an essential planning tool for…