News

Inger Andersen, Executive Director, UN Environment Programme

There is something in the air. I am not talking about pollution or greenhouse gas emissions. I am talking about the change humanity needs to address these and other environmental challenges, which have placed our planet and societies in imminent peril.

Buying carbon credits in exchange for a clean conscience while you carry on flying, buying diesel cars and powering your homes with fossil fuels is being challenged by people concerned about climate change.

People in the coastal districts of the eastern Indian state of Odisha are increasingly suffering from the effects of climate change. Most households in the area are dependent on natural resources for their livelihoods from fishing, forest foraging and paddy cultivation.

Between March and April 2019, two devastating cyclones hit the coast of Mozambique. Only six weeks apart, tropical cyclones Idai and Kenneth killed hundreds of people and left 1.85 million more stranded with no homes, food, water or basic infrastructure.

“Supposing doesn’t fill the grain basket; if doesn’t fill the larder.” This African proverb sends an equivocal message—to see a change, we must act.

Afghanistan is home to a vast number of rugged, snow-capped mountain ranges. But instability and conflict still disrupt daily life, and the Taliban maintain their grip on at least 60 per cent of the country.  

Leyla Acaroglu was 19 years old when, sitting in her first design lecture, she heard something that would change the way she saw the world forever.

Burundi, Chad and Sudan are home to some of the world’s largest displaced populations and vulnerable communities.

Burundi’s Gitega Province, which has one of the country’s highest population densities, hosts several thousands of people in refugee settlements and camps. About 96 per cent of families use fuelwood as a primary energy source for cooking.

Beira, one of Mozambique’s oldest cities and the country’s fourth largest, is in ordinary times a spectacular port city overlooking the Indian Ocean.

Founded in the 19th Century by the Portuguese, the city’s landscape is dotted with buildings which evoke memories of colonial architecture in the world’s second largest Lusophone country.

“You are stealing our future.”

When Swedish 16-year-old Greta Thunberg first spoke out, she was alone. On Friday, 15 March 2019, she was joined by thousands of young people around the world, as demonstrations gathered momentum in the Belgium, Canada, Germany, India, Japan, Kenya, South Africa, the United Kingdom, the United States, and beyond.

They are speaking out and their voices are thundering: “Act now!” 

Many people across the world, including schoolchildren, are demanding bolder action on climate change by governments, businesses and investors. There are tremendous opportunities here to “think beyond, solve different,” transform our economies, and change the way we live.

‘Seawater is coming into our farms and killing the plants’

The water from the wells in Kisakasaka used to be so salty that it would turn people’s teeth yellow. Children, no matter how thirsty, would often refuse to drink. But with no other water source in this farming village near Zanzibar’s capital Stone Town, around 1,000 residents were forced to drink increasingly salty water that gave them headaches and nausea.

It was the first international ice hockey game ever played in Kenya. It was also historical because it was organized to call attention to the impact of Climate Change - in Kenya and around the world. 

A staggering number of young Gambians have lost their lives trying to escape to Europe. UN Environment is implementing the largest natural resource development project in the history of the country to make their lives better back home.

Unsustainable food systems are threatening human health and environmental sustainability. We need to change the way we farm—and our diets.

There are more of us, we’re getting wealthier, and we’re demanding more protein-rich foods, such as meat. In the long run, this is simply not sustainable.

The students at Kingani school in the Tanzanian town of Bagamoyo used to have two choices for drinking water at school: get sick or remain thirsty.

Eating less meat, flying less, or opting for renewable energy can accelerate the transition to a low-carbon economy. But why aren’t more people doing this? What are the barriers to low carbon consumption?

Behavioural science can help us understand how people process, respond to, and share information to identify the drivers that transform awareness to action, and action to sustained behaviour change.

Climate change, deforestation and rising sea-levels have been causing devastating rice shortages for Cambodia’s coastal communities. UN Environment is supporting the Cambodian government in their attempts to promote alternative livelihoods to overcome these challenges.

UN Environment and partners are working in Africa to boost agricultural production, create jobs, and counter climate unpredictability.

As part of a project to help people adapt to climate change, UN Environment and the Cambodian government have established school vegetable gardens, along with a water-pump for irrigation and some training for growing vegetables.

There is barely a murmur from the dozens of pupils gathered in the grounds of Ngon primary school in Cambodia, even when the teachers are gone.

During the 12th century, people came to Cambodia’s Kulen mountain, a sacred place associated with fertility, to cut huge chunks of stone that would have to be hauled down by elephants.

This video shows the outcome of the UN Climate Change Conference in Katowice, Poland. It highlights the climate action that needs to be taken to achieve the climate goals of the Paris Agreement.

You’ve probably never heard of ‘groundtruthing’—the term isn’t widely known outside of scientific circles—but the concept it describes is quietly transforming how communities respond to disasters. Groundtruthing essentially means fact-checking data from satellites that only orbit the earth once a day.

An innovative finance project in Indonesia is providing jobs while preserving the habitat of endangered species.

Sri Hartiwi, a rubber tapper in Indonesia’s Jambi Province on the island of Sumatra, has a demanding routine. Her day starts at 3.30 a.m. when she cooks for the family and goes off to work in a plantation till 1.00 p.m. She gets a holiday on Sundays.

This 11 December is International Mountain Day. Almost one billion people live in mountain areas, and over half of our population depends on mountains for water, food and clean energy.

Yet mountains are under threat from climate change, land degradation, over exploitation and natural disasters. These have potentially far-reaching and devastating consequences, both for mountain communities and the rest of the world.