UNEP Chief Addresses First Plenary Session of the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES)

Achim Steiner, UN Under-Secretary General and Executive Director UN Environment Programme

Nairobi, Kenya, 3 October 2011 Your Excellency the Vice President of Kenya, Kalonzo Musyoka,
Distinguished delegates, members of the international scientific community,

Ladies and Gentlemen,

Welcome to Nairobi and to the headquarters of UNEP and a wide range of UN organizations and agencies dealing with technical, scientific and humanitarian issues locally, regionally and globally.

I would like to thank the following governments of France, Germany, Kenya, New Zealand, Norway, the Republic of Korea, South Africa, Sweden, the United Kingdom and the European Commission for their important contributions towards this meeting.

Indeed this meeting and the hugely diverse participation would not have been possible without your support.

The Spirit of Wangari

I believe it is also appropriate to pay tribute to a great Kenyan, great woman, a great environmentalist, a great friend of UNEP’s and many in this room and a real leader in the true sense of the word-Professor Wangari Maathai.

Meetings like this will sorely miss her cheerfulness, humanity, intellect, oratory skills and above all that downright dogged determination to not let the small things get in the way of the big picture and what needs to be done.

It is precisely that kind of spirit that should guide this meeting en route to the second and final session next year.

Getting Down to Business

For those of you who may be new to IPBES, let me first say it has been a long and sometimes challenging road.

Three years ago in Putrajaya, Malaysia, governments and the international community came together for the first time to discuss the idea of an Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES).

It followed the conclusions of the International Mechanism of Scientific Expertise on Biodiversity (IMoSEB) consultations and the ongoing work in the follow-up to the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment of 2005.

Since Putrajaya there has been a further two meetings. Here in Nairobi in 2009 and in June of last year in Busan, Republic of Korea.

The outcome from Busan was clear and governments, many of which are here today, all worked late into the night making compromises on all sides to ensure that an important agreement was reached.

In many ways it was the United Nations at its best.

The agreement from Busan was ‘that an intergovernmental science policy platform for biodiversity and ecosystem services should be established to strengthen the science-policy interface for biodiversity and ecosystem services for the conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity, long-term human well-being and sustainable development.’

So it has been an effort and an additional challenge in an increasingly busy and overloaded calendar of international, regional and national meetings and events.

But it was very much worth it given the science and the reality of a world nearly 20 years after the Rio Earth Summit and with some eight months to go to Rio+20in June 2012.

A world where, later this month, the seventh billionth person is expected to be born-an increase in the global population by over 20 per cent since 1992.

Indeed it is our collective responsibility to now bring this long but fruitful process to its final conclusion-putting this agreement into action.

As requested by the 65th Session of the UN General Assembly and subsequently the UNEP Governing Council in February this year -modalities and institutional arrangements in order to fully operationalize the platform to be discussed and agreed upon – at the earliest opportunity.

And UNEP has been working in partnership with UNESCO, FAO, UNDP, MEAs, NGOs and the scientific community to facilitate and assist you as the decision makers to this end.

The agenda ahead of you all this week is a full one and must respond to that request to fully operationalize the platform.

Important issues such as what this platform will look like, how it will be run and how you will decide where it will be located will need to be discussed.

Ensuring that IPBES is set up in a way which strengthens the scientific underpinning that addresses the ongoing and increasing declines in global biodiversity and the continuing degradation of ecosystem services will be vital.

The Needs of Governments to Scientists and the MEAs are Paramount

This platform needs to work. It needs to make a difference. And to do that it needs to be operationalized in a manner where the best science can be brought to bear on informing policy making at the global, regional and national levels in a way which is relevant but not prescriptive.

The platform must respond to the needs of governments and take into account the needs of other stakeholders.

In particular it needs to be operationalized to respond to the needs of the Multilateral Environmental Agreements -many of which have taken decisions in their Conferences of the Parties or subsidiary bodies welcoming the establishment of IPBES to help meet their needs.

In Busan four overarching functions for IPBES were agreed upon and are set out around the room on these banners.

These are knowledge generation; assessment; policy support; and capacity building.

I would urge you to keep these four functions in mind when discussing these more structural and procedural issues so that the body you operationalize can actually deliver at the highest standards possible.

There have been different interpretations of the UN General Assembly resolution text on IPBES.

Whilst recognizing that there does need to be agreement on the legal basis for IPBES as a prerequisite for the platforms’ operationalization, I urge you to focus this week on the many additional elements that need to be agreed upon.

This will allow us to move forward to ensure that this platform is operationalized and can start its critical work on helping to address biodiversity loss and ecosystem services degradation.

I will not revisit with you the many reasons why you agreed in Busan that IPBES is needed. Everyone in this room knows this and has acknowledged it by your willingness to travel across the globe to be here today.

I am sure we will see considerable progress here this week at the end of this first session so we can all springboard to next year’s second part of the process.

One that builds on this week’s discussions and finally turns the efforts, requests and ideas of scientists and committed governments dating back often decades, into the living breathing Platform.

I look forward to working with you all to do this, and commit the ongoing support of UNEP.

Source: UNEP NEWS CENTRE
Original: http://goo.gl/alBaK

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Calling all scientists! See the new Programme of Research on Climate Change Vulnerability, Impacts and Adaptation

The Programme of Research on Climate Change Vulnerability, Impacts and Adaptation (PROVIA) is a global initiative between which aims to provide direction and coherence at the international level for research on vulnerability, impacts and adaptation (VIA). Launched with the support of leading scientists and decision-makers, PROVIA responds to the urgent call by the scientific community for a more cohesive and coordinated approach, and the critical need to harmonize, mobilize, and communicate the growing knowledge-base on VIA.

To this end, PROVIA will act as a new and growing network of scientists, practitioners and decision-makers working towards identifying research gaps and meeting policy needs in climate change vulnerability, impact and adaptation research.

Acknowledging emerging policy strategies, new scientific developments and lessons learnt from past programmes, PROVIA promises to deliver, in collaboration with its implementing partners, improved coordination of international research on the impacts of and responses to climate change, and provide the credible scientific information that is being increasingly requested by the world’s decision makers.

The PROVIA Secretariat is currently hosted by UNEP in Nairobi.

More info go here: http://goo.gl/5qgpt

Source: PROVIA
Original: http://goo.gl/5qgpt

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2011 UNEP – United Nations Environment Programme Survey on Emerging Issues

The aim of this survey is to score and rank emerging issues that have been determined from two unique UNEP processes:

The UNEP Foresight Process:
A process aimed at informing the UN system and the greater policy community about the global environmental issues that need attention over the “next one to three years” and to provide input into the “emerging issues theme” of the Rio+20 Conference.

The Global Environment Outlook 5 (GEO-5):
UNEP’s flagship assessment that reports on the state, trends and outlook of the global environment. GEO-5 will analyze policy options that help speed-up realization of internationally agreed goals. It will also consider global responses necessary for sustainable development. The GEO-5 report will provide input on the themes of Rio+20 Conference. It will be published in May 2012 and its Summary for Policy Makers will be available by the end of February 2012.

To take parte go here: http://bit.ly/ppkLNp

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Angela Cropper, Special Advisor to the Executive Director of UNEP, on the importance of Rio+20

Angela Cropper
Former Deputy Executive Director, now Special Advisor to the Executive Director, UNEP

Next year’s Rio+20 Conference is a golden opportunity for political leadership, given the dire, urgent and complex economic, social and environmental issues that confront the world. The requirement for such leadership and commitment on macro sustainable development issues is more pressing than the need for long lists of sectoral ‘to dos’, which mostly already exist on paper as outcomes of global summits and sectoral processes.

We know what needs to be done. We need, however, to examine why implementation lags so far behind such resolutions of mind and what would enable this Conference to elevate its ambition and make good use of the opportunity before it. How might it remove some of the impediments to sustainable development? What kind of outcomes would position the world to deal with some of the urgent, if complex, problems it faces?

Here are ten ideas for ambitious approaches which need political direction and subsequent commitment:

1. Shape the approach to economic growth to serve social objectives and recognize environmental limits and imperatives.
The Conference will meet at a propitious moment, as the world now much better understands the issues of sustainable development and how the economy, the environment and human well-being are inter-related and mutually supportive. But this understanding is not put into practice: environmental imperatives and human well-being objectives are invariably traded off as optional and secondary to economic growth. This impedes sustainable development which unifies economic, social and environmental objectives — as opposed to adding on environmental and social considerations only where the economic bottom line remains unaffected.

The Conference could set this relationship properly on its feet, putting economic growth at the service of the social objectives which governments have long enunciated over time and recognising and respecting resource and environmental constraints. This will require qualitatively different attention to decisions about policy, investment, and other development interventions, so that environmental and human wellbeing outcomes are not sacrificed in the preoccupation with, and pursuit of, economic growth.

2. Make a commitment to reduce inequity, domestically and globally.
The Conference could draw attention to how the present economic approach generates persistent poverty and increasing inequity, recognizing that the peripheral means by which the world tries to alleviate them do not allow it to catch up. It could commit itself to reducing that equity gap consciously and urgently both within and among countries, and put in place arrangements to keep the process under global and national scrutiny. Without achieving this for the present generation we can hardly expect to meet the concern for equity between generations.

3. Require more appropriate measures of development to be formulated and applied
It is well established that relying on Gross Domestic Product as the measure of development is misleading, especially given the goal of sustainable development, yet we persist in its use. The Conference could call for urgent and accelerated work, in a specified time frame, towards a new set of measurements and indicators that reflect the three dimensions of sustainable development as equally important. National Income Accounting Systems will also need to reflect the same characteristics.

4. Require corporate reporting on integrated sustainability parameters.
It is important to understand how economic activities affect national economic, environmental and social dimensions of sustainable development. Much available technical guidance is available on how such sustainability reporting can be done, and some countries have already moved to require this important measure of accountability by law. The Conference could conclude that such national reporting should be made mandatory, to permit oversight of corporate practice and to guide enabling policies and institutional arrangements. This would contribute to measuring national progress and, if universally applied, would not affect competitiveness.

5. Commit to enhanced investment and arrangements for public involvement.
Moving towards sustainable development cannot be done by governments alone: they must guide and enable societies along that pathway. Societies must understand the nature of the changes required and be prepared to support them. National — as opposed to government — ownership of the approaches and measures to be taken needs to be cultivated and secured. This requires educational programmes that build understanding and could lead to changes in values and behaviour; access to information that enables and empowers citizens to make choices and inputs; and mechanisms for public involvement and consultation that are part of national governance arrangements.

6. Make an affirmative intervention on the economic interests of youth.
Youth unemployment — and the tensions to which it leads — is a global phenomenon. The Conference could decide to establish a global programme for training and employing young people to equip them with the skills and opportunities to share more equitably in the development process. This could be especially useful if linked to the nature and range of skills required to ‘green’ economies.

7. Agree to take action to restore the world’s marine commons.
The science on the degradation of the marine commons is unambiguous; the policy actions required are clear; but political decision-making lags behind. Effective action is invariably sacrificed to national interests and practices while, globally, there is a laissez-faire approach, even though the issue is vital to global environmental sustainability and many livelihoods. With present practice and approaches, the assets of the marine commons will continue to degrade, perhaps irretrievably, in spite of the many polices, programmes and instruments in place from national to global levels. These urgently need to be unified and gaps filled, including by paying attention to ocean areas not covered by present governance arrangements. The Conference could declare its commitment to the systemic action required to address this need and require that it be served through all the related global processes.

8. Commit to transforming land management and food production and consumption systems to ensure national and global food security.
This is essential for many reasons: avoiding a new wave of converting forests and wetlands in response to the pressures for world food security; ensuring that existing agricultural land is used sustainably; addressing the multiple pressures that lead to processes of land degradation and desertification; and addressing the needs of the estimated two billion people who subsist in threatened ecological systems and are at the bottom of the human well-being ladder. The Conference could commit to increased investment in alleviating such processes and to the national policies and actions required.

9. Help Least Developed Countries onto a ‘fast runway’ for Sustainable Development.
The Conference could take global leadership on behalf of the world’s 48 most disadvantaged countries, and set the stage for a transformative moment in the Global Partnership for Development. It could decide on global affirmative action to help them overcome impediments over domestic investible resources, access to modern technologies on affordable terms, and technical capacity for designing accelerated economic transformation and the institutional framework of policies, legislation, regulation, fiscal measures that will be required. This would also include establishing and harmonizing a public/private investment and financing platform.

10. Commit to an energy compact to expand access, efficiency, and investment in renewables.
The Conference could catalyze a new global energy mix by relating energy demand (access, saving and efficiency) and supply (including incentive policies, subsidies, investments and the deployment of renewable energy sources). This could be an important lever for simultaneously addressing economic, social and environmental aspirations in the context of climate change targets and sustainable development.

Source: UNEP
Original: http://bit.ly/qcW6qY

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Has the problem of the ozone hole been solved?

New UNEP documentary examines its status

Paris, 16 September 2011 – The ozone hole is back in the news. In August the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) reported that signs of ozone depletion were again appearing over the Antarctic. A few months earlier, the Antarctic ozone hole was making headlines as scientists found that it was “creating rainfall in subtropical regions”.

The problem of the ozone hole was supposed to be solved, wasn’t it?

In fact, the closing of the hole in the world’s stratospheric ozone layer is still many decades away and the effects and interactions of ozone depletion on climate change are just starting to be understood.

For these reasons, the OzonAction Programme of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) decided to embark on an investigative journey through the history and science of the ozone layer, the actions taken to address this major environmental threat and the consequences both for the ozone layer and the Earth’s climate system.

The resulting documentary, The Antarctic Ozone Hole: From Discovery to Recovery, examines the current state of the ozone layer, the effects of ozone depletion on climate change and the potential impact on communities worldwide.

Thid scientific journey, which had a worldwide screening today to mark the International Day for the Preservation of the Ozone Layer, is not a portrait of a planet in crisis but rather has experts from NASA, the British Antarctic Survey, Colombia University and other leading ozone researchers who offer hope and solutions to reducing ozone depletion. Indeed, they show that the Montreal Protocol, which covers ozone depleting substances (ODS), can deliver immediate climate benefits.

“The Montreal Protocol is a great example of what can be accomplished if nations, industry, technologists and scientists all combine to work on a problem,” said Paul Newman from NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center.

One hundred and ninety-six countries have signed the Montreal Protocol, making it the first treaty of any kind to achieve universal ratification. All the world’s governments are now legally obligated to phase out ODS under the schedules defined by the Protocol.

“The Montreal Protocol started off with baby steps. The countries took a decision and based on science, they changed the decisions. There were many amendments and adjustments, which finally made it so successful. There may be a lesson in that for the climate negotiations and climate decisions, too,” said A.R Ravishankara from NOAA.

The International Day for the Preservation of the Ozone Layer or (“Ozone Day”), is an official UN day commemorating the date in 1987 on when the Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer was signed. Screenings of the film include a launch in Nairobi where UNEP has its headquarters, and at the Biosphère Environment Museum in Montreal, the city where the Protocol was signed. The video is available in English and French at

http://www.unep.org/ozonaction/antarctic

The international version will be provided to National Ozone Units for translation into local languages upon request. The narration of the French version is by Elisa Sednaoui, a young Franco-Italian actress and model.

For more information, please contact:

Nick Nuttall, Acting Director Division of Communications and Public Information/UNEP Spokesperson, nick.nuttall@unep.org + 254 73 363 2755

Moira O’Brien-Malone, Head, Communications, UNEP Paris, moira.obrien-malone@unep.org, +33 1 44 37 76 12 or mobile +33 6 82 26 93 73.

Anne Fenner, Communications, OzonAction Branch, UNEP, Paris anne.fenner@unep.org, +33 1 44 37 14 54 or +33678787882

Note to Editors:

About the Montreal Protocol

The Montreal Protocol focuses on the protection of the earth’s ozone layer. This treaty has enabled both developed and developing countries to achieve a near total phase-out in the production and use of most ozone depleting substances.

Because the majority of ozone depleting substances are also potent global warming gasses, the actions taken under the Montreal Protocol have contributed significantly to the global effort to address climate change.

Interesting facts about the Montreal Protocol

The Montreal Protocol has achieved universal participation by all states in the world, the number of participating States is 196, an achievement unprecedented by any treaty;

It is estimated that without the Protocol, by the year 2050 ozone depletion would have risen to at least 50% in the northern hemisphere’s mid latitudes and 70% in the southern mid latitudes, about 10 times worse than current levels;

The Montreal Protocol is estimated to have prevented:

-19 million more cases of non-melanoma cancer
-1.5 million more cases of melanoma cancer
-130 million more cases of eye cataracts

Ninety seven per cent of all ozone depleting substances controlled by the global treaty known as the Montreal Protocol have been phased out – but what remains is still a challenge to eliminate;

Global observations have verified that atmospheric levels of key ozone depleting substances are going down and it is believed that with implementation of the Protocol’s provisions the ozone layer should return to pre-1980 levels by 2050 to 2075;

In 2003, political recognition of the Protocol came in the statement of then United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan, who termed the Montreal Protocol “perhaps the single most successful international environmental agreement to date”.

The Ozone Layer

The Ozone layer protects the earth’s inhabitants from harmful UV radiation and is essential for life on Earth, as it screens out lethal UV-B radiation. Increased UV-B from ozone depletion can lead to:

More melanoma and non-melanoma skin-cancers

More eye cataracts

Weakened immune systems – this may contribute to viral reactivation and a reduction of effectiveness of vaccines

Reduced plant yields, changes in plant growth and form

Damage to ocean eco-systems and reduced fishing yields

Damage to wood and plastics

About UNEP DTIE’s OzonAction Branch:

The OzonAction Branch of UNEP’s Division of Technology, Industry and Economics is based in Paris and assists developing countries to meet and sustain their compliance obligations under the Montreal Protocol. With this programme’s assistance, countries are able to make informed decisions about alternative technologies and ozone-friendly policies. With support from the Multilateral Fund for the Implementation of the Montreal Protocol, the Branch has implemented more than 1000 projects and services, benefitting more than 100 developing countries plus other services that assist another 40 developing countries.

Please see: www.unep.org/ozonaction

About The Secretariat

The Ozone Secretariat is the Secretariat for the Vienna Convention for the Protection of the Ozone Layer and for the Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer.

Based at the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) offices in Nairobi (Kenya), the Secretariat’s main duties include arranging for and servicing all the meetings related to the Convention and the Protocol, arranging for the implementation of decisions taken by the Governments, monitoring and reporting on the implementation of the treaties, collecting and analysing data on controlled ozone-depleting substances, representing the treaties in relevant international and regional meetings and providing information to governments, international organizations and individuals on various aspects of the protection of the ozone layer.

Original: http://bit.ly/qoMXEm

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Put Your Group on the 2011 Global Environmental Map!

Clean Up the World is a global campaign that inspires and empowers communities to clean up, fix up and conserve their environment. Held in partnership with the United Nations Environment Programme, it mobilises an estimated 35 million people across 130 countries each year.

In 2011, we are asking communities to unite to improve the local and global environment under the theme “Our Place… Our Planet… Our Responsibility”.

This weekend we celebrate Clean Up the World Weekend: September 16 – 18. See what participants around the world are doing.

Original: http://activities.cleanuptheworld.org/

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