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Products today are integrating more and more advanced technologies and sustainability criteria into their design. Soft toys with computer chips, medical devices that can assist in operations and learn from past uses, repurposed plastic bottles assembled to form a new, different product… each pose…
A large, multidisciplinary team of international experts under the leadership of UNECE is working in Bishkek, assessing the environmental performance of the country by examining developments during the past decade.   The third review of Kyrgyzstan measures progress made and considers challenges…
Standards are an integral part of society and are present in nearly everything that surrounds us on a daily basis; they shape how products are designed, produced and used. They are in all products that cross borders and can play a key role to reduce technical barriers to trade as well as integrate…
Uzbekistan faces serious challenges in the realm of road safety, with around 3,600 people killed on its roads in 2018, according to WHO figures. Between January and March 2022 alone, 39 children lost their lives on the country’s roads, where 204 out of 1,469 road accidents involved children,…
As an established convenor of standards developing organisations, UNECE encourages the integration of a gender perspective, providing practical steps for organisations to advance women’s full and effective participation in standards and standards development. With the objective of strengthening…
With the review of the amended Protocol to Abate Acidification, Eutrophication and Ground-Level Ozone (Gothenburg Protocol) under the UNECE Convention on Long-range Transboundary Air Pollution well underway, experts further discussed the sufficiency and effectiveness of current measures at the 60th…
The second Environmental Performance Review (EPR) of Armenia kicks off in Yerevan under the lead of UNECE and carried out by a large, multidisciplinary team of international experts. This is the 56th EPR since the establishment of the UNECE EPR Programme over a quarter of a century ago. Armenia has…
UNECE is leading a large and diverse group of international experts carrying out the 55th Environmental Performance Review (EPR) since the establishment of the UNECE EPR Programme, 25 years ago. Azerbaijan has requested UNECE to review its environmental performance for a third time. To provide the…
COP26 was a positive step forward in the fight against climate change, but as the UN Secretary General pointed out in his comments: “it is not enough. We must accelerate climate action to keep alive the goal of limiting the global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees.” The compromise deal reflects the…
A map of air pollutant emission sources of a given country can help experts and decision-makers understand which policies are most viable. Spatial allocations of emissions are also important to understand where emissions are coming from on a regional level. Spatially allocating – or gridding –…
With the review of the amended Protocol to Abate Acidification, Eutrophication and Ground-Level Ozone (Gothenburg Protocol) well underway, expert groups under the UNECE Air Convention are now collecting information to assess the effectiveness of measures. The amended Protocol establishes legally…
With the UN Food Systems Summit taking place next week under the auspices of the UN General Assembly (23 September 2021), we must recognize that the food systems we have built over recent decades are unsustainable. The food choices we make every day as consumers and producers of food are having a…
UNECE’s Expert Forum for Producers and Users of Climate Change-related Statistics took place in Geneva and online from 31 August to 3 September, in the run-up to COP26 later this autumn. The annual UNECE expert forums bring together not only producers but also users of climate change-related…
UNECE is deepening its support to help countries of the region capitalize on innovation to recover from the pandemic and realize the ambitious vision of the 2030 Agenda.  The UNECE Innovation for Sustainable Development Review (I4SDR) of Uzbekistan, which is currently underway, will set out…
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…
Four decades of experience under the UNECE Convention on Long-range Transboundary Air Pollution (Air Convention) have demonstrated that ratification and implementation of the Convention and its protocols reduces health and environmental impacts in a more cost-effective way than unilateral action by…
Countries in the Caucasus, Central Asia, Eastern and South-Eastern Europe are stepping up efforts for their sustainable energy transition with ambitious plans and policies, aiming to significantly cut CO2 emissions and advance implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the Paris…
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…
Transport continues to be a significant source of air pollution, especially in cities in the UNECE region. Air pollutants, such as particulate matter (PM) and nitrogen dioxide (NO2), harm human health and the environment. Although air pollution from transport has decreased in the last decade…
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…
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…
Over the past 100 years, humans have massively altered flows of nitrogen on our planet. While this has increased food production, it has led to and multiple threats to our health and risks irreversible and abrupt environmental change if decisive action is not taken. Driven by intensive animal…
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; …
Contrary to what most people think, transport is not the major source of particle pollution in the air. In fact, in Serbia and many other countries, domestic heating is the most important source of harmful particle pollution (PM2.5 and PM 10). In Serbia, pollution is a result of heating, which is…
Black carbon (BC) is an air pollutant with significant impacts on our health and climate. Resulting from incomplete combustion processes, it is part of fine particulate pollution (PM2.5) and estimated to have a warming impact on climate that is 460–1,500 times greater than that of carbon dioxide (…