1 February 2021 (UNEP) In February 2021, representatives of the 193 Member States of the UN, businesses leaders, civil society and environmentalists from around the world will come together virtually for the fifth session of the United Nations Environment Assembly (UNEA), the world’s highest environmental decision-making body.
Photo by UNEP / 01 Feb 2021
The UN Environment Programme (UNEP) answers frequently-asked questions about this biennial assembly, which aims to galvanize international action on climate change, pollution and ecosystem loss.
Given the enormity of challenges the world is facing, why are environmental conferences like UNEA important?
UN Secretary-General, Antonio Guterres has said it best: Humanity is waging a war on nature. And this is suicidal. In 2020, the world faced flooding, wildfires, locust invasions and a pandemic that has brought life-as-we-know-it to a halt. The message could not be clearer.
World leaders set for pivotal environmental assembly
Photo by UNEP / 01 Feb 2021
In February 2021, representatives of the 193 Member States of the UN, businesses leaders, civil society and environmentalists from around the world will come together virtually for the fifth session of the United Nations Environment Assembly (UNEA), the world’s highest environmental decision-making body.
The UN Environment Programme (UNEP) answers frequently-asked questions about this biennial assembly, which aims to galvanize international action on climate change, pollution and ecosystem loss.
Given the enormity of challenges the world is facing, why are environmental conferences like UNEA important?
UN Secretary-General, Antonio Guterres has said it best: Humanity is waging a war on nature. And this is suicidal. In 2020, the world faced flooding, wildfires, locust invasions and a pandemic that has brought life-as-we-know-it to a halt. The message could not be clearer.
The international community needs to be warned that future pandemics could occur more frequently and affect the global economy with more devastating impact than Covid-19, the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) stated in a report published in late October 2020.
Experience shows that, when co-constructed and implemented in a participatory manner with local communities and decision-makers, these surveillance systems work. All that’s left to do now is to invest in these systems on a larger scale.
That is precisely the goal of PREZODE (PREventing Zoonotic Disease Emergence), a new French-led international research coalition that was launched at the One Planet Summit. The aim is to construct an integrated approach to health.
Solutions for a planet in crisis
Unsplash/Mark Divier / 20 Jan 2021
Speech prepared for delivery at the London School of Economics Public Lecture
Right now, COVID-19 is front and centre of our concerns. The pandemic has devasted lives and economies. It has highlighted income inequalities, with the rich growing richer and the poor growing poorer. It has put in sharp relief the environmental inequalities facing minorities. But as we seek to overcome this terrible pandemic, we must do so in the knowledge that it is not something we can just fix, wash our hands of and return to normal. Because it is “normal” that brought us to where we are today. The pandemic has shown that we must rethink our relationship with nature, as humanity’s destruction of wild spaces is implicated in the emergence of many illnesses that jump from animals to humans.