Preventing, controlling and managing pollution is central to improving health, human well-being and prosperity for all.
UNEP drives capacity and leadership in sound management of chemicals and waste while working to improve ways to reduce waste through circularity and pollutants released to the air, water, soil and the ocean.
The Quadripartite agencies are pleased to announce a call for expressions of interest from representatives of youth-led and youth-serving organizations to serve on the Quadripartite Working Group on Youth Engagement for Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR).
Those with experience of working on AMR and under the age of 30 are strongly encouraged to apply.
The objective of the Quadripartite Working Group on Youth Engagement for AMR is to guide the engagement of the Quadripartite with youth in order to harness the energy of this population in the global fight against AMR. The Working Group will build on existing work by Quadripartite agencies with youth in other contexts and will both feed into and learn from the work of the other Working Groups to ensure synergy.
UNEP and the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) have jointly launched the Fortifying Infrastructure for Responsible Extinguishment (FIRE) project, which aims to phase out the use of toxic fluorinated firefighting foams and replace them with safer alternatives at major airports in Egypt, Ethiopia, Kenya, Nigeria, and South Africa.
Together with participating airports, FIRE will support the transition from highly toxic firefighting foams to fluorine-free foams while maintaining safety and operational integrity. These efforts are expected to promote safe removal of 4,500 tonnes of PFAS-contaminated material from fire trucks and safe disposal of 130 tonnes of PFAS-based foam concentrate.
The FIRE Project is implemented by UNEP, executed by ICAO, and funded by the Global Environment Facility (GEF). This project is part of a broader set of UNEP-GEF activities dedicated to global monitoring and eliminating the use of Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs) and reducing the impacts of POPs on human health and the environment.
Held under the theme “Racing for Air”, 7 September 2025 will be the sixth International Day of Clean Air for blue skies (Clean Air Day).
UNEP is calling on the public to organize events to reflect and reinvigorate the resolve and ambitions for Clean Air Day!
Register your event to gain global visibility and inspire others around the world to accelerate solutions to deliver clean air for all.
On day 3 of the CLEAN-Air Forum 2025 happening in Nairobi from 15-17 July, UNEP will be participating in the side event, From Harm to Healing: Tackling Hospital Waste for Cleaner Air, which starts at 9:30 AM EAT.
The forum is an annual convening for the communities of practice in Africa and serves as a platform for knowledge sharing, collaborations, and multi-regional partnerships for tackling air pollution in African cities. The 2025 theme, Partnerships for Clean Air Solutions, seeks to strengthen cross-border transdisciplinary partnerships, evidence generation and capacity for advancing clean air solutions in Africa.
The Quadripartite Joint Secretariat on AMR is pleased to invite you to participate in an online consultation to support the establishment of the Independent Panel on Evidence for Action Against Antimicrobial Resistance (IPEA). Your input will contribute to shaping its founding documents and ensuring its global relevance, impact, and legitimacy.
Led by the Quadripartite Organizations (FAO, UNEP, WHO, and WOAH), this consultation aims to gather stakeholder insights to help design the founding documents for the IPEA that should be scientifically credible, independent, and policy-relevant to addresses complex, cross-sectoral challenge of antimicrobial resistance (AMR) across human health, animal health, agrifood, and environmental sectors.
📅 Survey closes 25 July.
UNEP and partners invite young innovators in Kenya to co-create digital and data solutions addressing climate change, nature loss, and pollution and waste. 'Hack for the Environment' is open to Kenyan residents aged 18–35 with an interest in tech and the environment and will run from 26 July to 2 September.
📅 Apply by 20 July.
The Community Action for Fresh Water platform was launched on World Environment Day 2025 and is bringing together and encouraging thousands of communities to protect and restore local water bodies worldwide, including from plastic pollution.
Led by Rotary International and developed with UNEP support, the platform will serve as a global hub for sharing, monitoring and promoting community-led freshwater protection efforts. It will enable users to discover and track local projects, train citizen scientists, collect data and help close data gaps related to freshwater pollution and ecosystem health.
The platform will also store practical resources, including guidance materials and case studies, to support replicating successful initiatives across different regions.
UNEP supports governments, businesses, financial institutions, and other stakeholders in their just transition to a circular economy of plastics, thereby reducing plastic pollution and its impacts.
The UNEP report Turning off the Tap: How the world can end plastic pollution and create a circular economy proposes a systems change to address the causes of plastic pollution, starting by reducing problematic and unnecessary plastic use, redesigning the system, products and their packaging and combining these with a market transformation towards circularity in plastics. This can be achieved by accelerating three key shifts – reorient and diversify, reuse, and recycle, – and actions to deal with the legacy of plastic pollution.
Cada dólar gastado en la restauración de bosques degradados puede resultar en US$ 30 en beneficios económicos.
