United Nations

UN Official: States Must Go Beyond Climate Commitments

April 27, 2016

Indicating that the current commitments of governments to reduce greenhouse gas emissions are insufficient, UN Special Representative for Disaster Risk Reduction Robert Glasser has called on countries to go beyond their UN climate deal commitments to save the world from "catastrophic future weather events."
UN Pushes for Ambitious Action to Achieve SDGs

April 27, 2016

At a debate in New York on achieving the UN's comprehensive Sustainable Development Goals ("SDGs") by the year 2030, UN officials called on participants to discuss how to fulfill and finance the SDGs, as well as the UN's climate change agenda, to "create pathways out of our current crises" and transform the world.
UN, Google Use Satellite Data to Monitor "Sustainability"

April 26, 2016

The UN Food and Agriculture Organization and technology company Google have announced their collaboration to use satellite data to monitor land use, climate change, and the progress of the world toward fulfillment of the UN's comprehensive Sustainable Development Goals.
UN Report Calls for Rights-based Drugs Approach

April 26, 2016

Declaring that "health is a human right," Executive Director of the Joint UN Programme on HIV/AIDS Michel Sidibé has called for governments to decriminalize drug possession and use and to adopt a "harm reduction" approach to drugs that emphasizes the health and human rights of drug users.
UNESCO Links "Sustainable" Education, Designated Sites

April 26, 2016

The UN Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization ("UNESCO") recently hosted a forum in Athens considering how to use UNESCO's agenda on Education for Sustainable Development to push institutions of higher education to engage in some of the functions of maintaining UNESCO World Heritage Sites.
UN Report Outlines Social Policies to Remedy Child Inequality

April 25, 2016

A recent study published by the UN Children's Fund ("UNICEF") examines the effects of income inequality among children in high-income countries and calls on countries to implement social policies, including "protecting" the incomes of households with children and promoting healthy lifestyles, to remedy this inequality.
UN Launches Study of Global Warming "Cap"

April 25, 2016

Reuters reports that the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has launched a study to determine the feasibility of limiting global warming to an increase of 1.5 degrees Celsius, a goal set out in a global UN climate agreement signed by governments in New York last week.
UN Pushes Implementation of Climate Agenda in Africa

April 22, 2016

At the recent African Ministerial Conference on the Environment, an initiative affiliated with the UN Environment Programme and held in Cairo, government ministers from Africa agreed to speed along their implementation of the UN's climate change and sustainable development agendas in preparation for the UN Environment Assembly in May.
World Bank Chief Warns Against Coal Projects

April 22, 2016

At a press conference where he identified climate change, mass migration, and a potential global pandemic as the three major threats to the world economy, the website Climate Home reports that World Bank President Jim Yong Kim warned that new coal-fired power plants could counter the efforts by countries to mitigate climate change under the UN climate deal.
Coalition Works Toward Global Mechanism on Carbon Taxation

April 22, 2016

At its first High Level Assembly in Washington, DC, the Carbon Pricing Leadership Coalition, launched during the 2015 UN climate talks in Paris, began monitoring the progress of a global system imposing a tax on carbon emissions and collaborating with governments, nongovernmental organizations, and businesses to support this system.