The amount by which plastics flowing into the ocean could be reduced through circular economy measures, including under the deal to tackle plastic pollution nations began negotiating in 2022.
In 2022, the Minamata Convention on Mercury expanded its scope to cover unregulated sources of this harmful chemical element, including certain lamps, satellite propellants and children’s dental fillings. Mercury-added products like these account for 30 per cent of global mercury use.
UNEP helped Latin America and the Caribbean develop the Regional Action Plan on Air Quality 2022-2025.
In 2022, five years after the end of the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant conflict in Iraq, the International Organization for Migration and UNEP established a debris recycling centre in Mosul and handed it over to Mosul municipality for its continued operation.
At UNEA 5.2 in February, nations delivered a big win for people and planet by agreeing to negotiate a global deal to end plastic pollution, including in the marine environment.
UNEP’s State of Finance for Nature Report 2022 found that governments, businesses and financial institutions need to triple their annual investments in nature to limit global warming, halt biodiversity loss, achieve land degradation neutrality and meet the Sustainable Development Goals.
In 2022, UNEP joined a UN initiative to increase action across the triple planetary crisis by addressing human, animal, plant and environmental health as one interlinked challenge.
In July, the UN General Assembly declared access to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment a universal human right.
The UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration, led by UNEP and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN (FAO), is helping to deliver on commitments to restore 1 billion hectares of land, an area the size of China, by 2030. In 2022, the Decade awarded the first 10 World Restoration Flagships, which seek to restore more than 68 million hectares − an area bigger than Myanmar, France or Somalia − and create nearly 15 million jobs.
In December, at the UN Biodiversity Conference (the 15th meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity – COP15), States agreed on a ground-breaking new framework to protect biodiversity - the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, with four goals and 23 targets to slow biodiversity loss by 2030.
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