Thu, Jan 12, 2012 -
Four leading global organizations today
signed a Memorandum of Understanding to
create the Green Growth Knowledge Platform,
a cutting edge global initiative that will
identify and address major knowledge gaps
in green growth theory and practice.
The coming decade will
offer major opportunities for synergy between
environmental and economic sustainability
Mexico City meeting
points to further, deeper knowledge-sharing,
policy push
Further Resources
Green Growth Knowledge PlatformMexico City,
January 11, 2012 - Governments looking to
design and implement green growth policies
and move towards a green economy now have
a new source of information and assistance.
Four leading global organizations today
signed a Memorandum of Understanding to
create the Green Growth Knowledge Platform,
a cutting edge global initiative that will
identify and address major knowledge gaps
in green growth theory and practice. The
agreement was signed by the Global Green
Growth Institute, the Organisation for Economic
Co-operation and Development, the United
Nations Environment Programme, and the World
Bank.
"This MoU marks
the formal launch of essential international
cooperation on testing, exploring, and refining
policies and actions on green growth for
practical implementation in both developed
and developing countries," said Richard
Samans, Executive Director of the Global
Green Growth Institute.
The coming decade will
offer major opportunities for synergy between
environmental and economic sustainability.
For example, developing countries can factor
"green" into their new investments
in infrastructure and can further develop
agriculture and other natural resources
to improve livelihoods, create jobs, and
reduce poverty.
"Governments seeking
to re-ignite growth after the crisis,"
said OECD Secretary-General Angel Gurría,
"should harness innovation, investment,
and entrepreneurship to drive the shift
to greener economies. We must intensify
our efforts to move towards green growth
to preserve natural capital and reduce pollution.
IT will be essential to avoid path dependency
by breaking old habits of consumption and
investing in new technology and infrastructure.
The Green Growth Knowledge Platform will
be key for facilitating collaboration among
our four institutions, to provide governments
with the best possible tools to achieve
this goal."
The Green Growth Knowledge
Platform will improve local, national, and
global economic policy-making around the
world by providing rigorous and relevant
analysis of the various synergies and tradeoffs
between the economy and the environment.
It will complement other efforts by emphasizing
policy instruments that yield local environmental
co-benefits while stimulating growth, providing
a compelling set of incentives for governments.
Sylvie Lemmet, Director
of UNEP's Division of Technology, Industry
and Economics, said, "The Platform
offers new opportunities to push the envelope
on how a green economy transition can generate
jobs and income, while producing positive
impacts on the environment and setting a
new threshold for enhanced global cooperation
towards accelerating and scaling up sustainable
development."
The MoU signing took
place on the eve of the inaugural Green
Growth Knowledge Platform conference. The
conference, with more than 120 leading scholars
and practitioners, has been organized in
partnership with Mexico to:
take stock of the current
understanding of the economics of green
growth;
engage researchers and
practitioners in an ongoing dialogue to
increase understanding of how green growth
approaches can be applied in the field;
identify knowledge gaps
and establish priorities for knowledge-building
work and implementation; and
launch follow-on efforts.
"This conference
is taking an important step in convening
a community of experts and practitioners
to develop a shared, evidence-based vision
of the contributions greener growth can
make to sustainable development," said
Rachel Kyte, Vice President for Sustainable
Development at the World Bank. "By
joining forces and sharing data, we can
equip policy makers everywhere with better
tools to manage the choices and trade-offs
that greener and more inclusive growth may
entail."
The MoU signing and
conference are the first steps toward the
Green Growth Knowledge Platform's efforts
to shape the global knowledge agenda for
green growth. Moving forward, the Platform
will organize new research programs around
a handful of priority themes to be identified
later this week, as well as cultivate a
dynamic global community of green growth
researchers and practitioners.
+ More
UNEP Goodwill Ambassador
Gisele Bundchen Backs 'Small is Beautiful'
Energy Solutions on First Mission to Africa
Fri, Jan 13, 2012 -
On her first official visit to Africa, UNEP
Goodwill Ambassador and iconic face of fashion,
Gisele Bündchen, went to the grassroots
level in Kenya to experience the reality
of energy poverty and to see how Kenyans
are transforming their lives by accessing
sustainable energy.
Sustainable Energy for
AllNairobi, 12 January 2012 On her first
official visit to Africa, UNEP Goodwill
Ambassador and iconic face of fashion, Gisele
Bündchen, went to the grassroots level
in Kenya to experience the reality of energy
poverty and to see how Kenyans are transforming
their lives by accessing sustainable energy.
"Energy affects
everything. Children can study at night
when they have access to electricity. If
we can bring electricity to everyone, we
can help people to survive," she told
a press conference at the UN Environment
Programme's (UNEP) headquarters in Nairobi.
"It's unjust if
people do not have access to electricity.
Energy for all is achievable. Just 2% of
global investment is needed," she added,
speaking in the runup to the global launch
of the International Year of Sustainable
Energy for All (IYSEA).
Ms. Bündchen's
visit to Kenya took her to Kibera, East
Africa's largest slum, to look at biogas
centers (turning human waste into power),
to Kisumu, in western Kenya, where she took
part in collecting firewood and learned
about fuel-efficient cook stoves and to
the Mount Kenya area where micro-hydro power
is bringing electricity to over 2,000 households.
While gains have been
made in accessing electricity in the past
two decades, huge gaps still remain. One
in every five people on the planet do not
have access to electricity. In Sub-Saharan
Africa some 70 percent of the population
have no electricity, while in Kenya only
18 percent of households have power.
Access to adequate fuels
for cooking is also a major challenge, with
many families still dependent on wood which
produces toxic smoke, impacting the health
of women and children. Around half the world's
population cook on open indoor fires and
each year over 2.5 million people die prematurely
as a result of breathing in emissions from
these cook stoves, primarily from a substance
called black carbon, also known as soot.
Many more are blighted
by ill health, such as chronic bronchitis.
Meanwhile, black carbon is emerging as an
important climate change pollutant and is
also implicated in crop damage.
"We don't hear
about this and yet the solutions are so
simple," added Ms. Bündchen, who
has recently been named the 'world's greenest
celebrity'. "When we come out of our
bubbles and travel, you experience what
I did in Kenya and it's amazing how we can
change our viewpoints You ask what can we
do in our daily lives to make change. Everybody
can help in a different way," she said.
"She speaks for
the issues and she speaks from the heart.
We were lucky to get her as a Goodwill Ambassador.
It's important to go out and meet people,
which is part of making someone a great
ambassador who can in turn communicate to
millions of people that, for example, sustainable
energy for all is possible, that it is one
powerful way of motivating and catalyzing
positive change in the run-up to Rio+20
in June this year," said UN Under Secretary
General and UNEP Executive Director Achim
Steiner.
"We need to change
our way of thinking and not think globally
but locally. In Africa two thirds of the
population still do not have access to energy.
There are solutions at the local and community
levels. I have a dream that with photovoltaic
energy we can build grids up from the bottom
and that one day we will see rural areas
generating electricity and selling energy
to the cities," he added.
Kenya is increasingly
developing its geothermal, wind, solar and
hydro power resources at the local level.
UNEP has worked to realize
and to accelerate the use of renewable energies
within the overall theme of a Green Economy,
with a special emphasis on Africa, and Kenya
in particular. The UN's new office facility
in Nairobi, which Ms. Bündchen visited
and which houses UNEP and UN-HABITAT, has
6,000 square meters of solar panels and
generates as much electricity as its 1,200
occupants consume.
Ms. Bündchen's
visit, which was organized by Practical
Action in partnership with UNEP, was designed
to raise the profile of the IYSEA and highlight
the importance of energy access globally.
"As a UNEP Ambassador,
Gisele recognises that no issue is more
relevant to the future of the global economy,
the prosperity and well-being of the world's
poorest people, and the preservation of
our planet, than sustainable energy. Her
passion, credibility and commitment to energy
access will draw significant attention to
this pressing development issue and help
to ensure that in two decades times, every
women, man and child has access to the power
to challenge work their way out of poverty,"
said Margaret Gardner, Director at Practical
Action.
Practical action, a
non-governmental organization headquartered
in the United Kingdom, works with poor communities
to provide them with small-scale solutions
to overcome their poverty.
Ms. Bündchen became a UNEP Goodwill
Ambassador in 2009.
+ More
Braulio Ferreira de
Souza Dias of Brazil Appointed New CBD Executive
Secretary
Sun, Jan 22, 2012 -
The UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon announced,
Friday, the appointment of Braulio Ferreira
de Souza Dias, a national of Brazil, as
Executive Secretary of the Secretariat of
the Convention on Biological Diversity.
The United Nations Secretary-General
Ban Ki-moon announced, Friday, the appointment
of Braulio Ferreira de Souza Dias, a national
of Brazil, as Executive Secretary of the
Secretariat of the Convention on Biological
Diversity, at the Assistant Secretary-General
level.
UNEP Ecosystem Management
SubprogrammeMr. Dias will succeed Ahmed
Djoghlaf, to whom the Secretary-General
is grateful for his continued commitment
and contribution to the Convention on Biological
Diversity in his capacity as Executive Secretary.
Mr. Dias brings to this
position extensive experience in policymaking
and in coordinating the implementation of
biodiversity policies, programmes and projects
at the national and international level.
Currently the National
Secretary for Biodiversity and Forests at
the Brazilian Ministry of the Environment,
Mr. Dias is directly responsible for overseeing
several multi-institution programmes and
the work of four institutions attached to
the Ministry. He has been deeply involved
with the negotiations and implementation
of the Convention on Biological Diversity
since its origin and participated, as a
member of the Brazilian delegation, in the
Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee
of the Convention on Biological Diversity.
Mr. Dias was previously
a Member of the Scientific and Technical
Advisory Panel of the Global Environment
Facility, Vice-President of the International
Union of Biological Sciences and Coordinator
of the Steering Committee of the Inter-American
Biodiversity Information Network.
Mr. Dias holds a Bachelor
of Science in biological sciences from the
University of Brasilia and is trained as
a scientist, with a Doctor of Philosophy
in zoology from the University of Edinburgh.
Born in 1953, Mr. Dias
is married and has one child.
South Sudan Joins Montreal Protocol and
Commits to Phasing Out Ozone-Damaging Substances
Mon, Jan 23, 2012
South Sudan has become the 197th signatory
to the Vienna Convention and Montreal Protocol
- two treaties that are helping to restore
concentrations of ozone around the planet,
thereby protecting life on Earth from the
sun's ultraviolet rays.
