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Uzbekistan is making significant efforts on key environmental issues, including tackling the consequences of the Aral Sea disaster and reforming policies on municipal waste management, biodiversity conservation and green economy. However, the country must step up measures to improve water…
Cameroon shares most of its water resources - such as Lake Chad, the Congo, Sanaga and Niger rivers - with other states. Cooperation on these shared waters is therefore essential to ensure economic development and preserve regional stability.As a result, Cameroon is also a heavily involved in…
The economies of Central Asia rely heavily on activities that produce, process or use large quantities of hazardous substances. The mining waste generated by activities such as the extraction and processing of minerals and metals including mercury and uranium cannot be released into the…
The nations of Central Asia – Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan – together with Afghanistan and Azerbaijan, are undergoing significant transformations as they advance in their implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. However, these countries…
The potential of ‘Big Data’ to enable faster, cheaper production of official statistics has for years been a hot topic among statistical offices.UNECE has been at the forefront in guiding countries through the many challenges—data quality, processing techniques, analytical capacity, access and…
Four thousand kilometers away from the UNECE headquarters in Geneva used to lie the Aral Sea. It was the fourth biggest lake in the world, in fact the lake was bigger than Switzerland. But if we travelled there today, we would only find a desert as the lake has dried out. The Caucasus and…
In the garment and footwear industry, worth 2.4 trillion USD, brands are increasingly confronted with the rise of the “conscious consumer”, who questions the environmental footprint of clothes and the social conditions in garment factories and calls for greater transparency and sustainability.…
You want to order online but hate the non-recyclable packaging material used in e-commerce in addition to cardboard? You are a restaurant owner and want to cut down on the dozens of Styrofoam boxes that your fish is delivered in every day? You are thinking of building a house but worry about the…
Decision makers, local communities, private sector actors, academia and the public increasingly rely on environmental information when addressing multifaceted environmental challenges and pursuing sustainable development. New digital technologies, interoperability between different information…
Georgia is taking further steps towards the development of strategic environmental assessment (SEA) and environmental impact assessment (EIA) systems that will help it in its efforts towards sustainable development. On 23 September, the draft law on EIA and SEA, which is now compliant with the…
Transboundary waters cover nearly half of the earth’s land surface and account for 60 per cent of global freshwater. Forty percent of the world`s population lives in shared basins, providing them with drinking and domestic water, irrigation for agriculture, enabling industries to function,…
How can we create new opportunities for integrated investment projects and to support sustainable development of water and energy resources in the Drina river basin, shared by Montenegro, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Serbia? How can potential trade-offs be limited in favour of harnessing…
Having the full picture is crucial for effective action to end violence against women. Yet today, efforts to address this critical sustainable development and human rights challenge remain severely hampered by lack of data.Violence against women is both a cause and a consequence of gender…
If you have been following the latest news about forests, there is one topic difficult to overlook – wildfires. The number of wildfires recorded so far this year has reached a record high. Prolonged periods of climate-change related droughts may be one of the causes of the increase in wildfires…
From young gender equality advocates to high-ranking government officials, more than 700 key stakeholders will gather in Geneva on 29-30 October 2019 to review the progress made on the commitments of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action, the most visionary agenda for gender equality…
The world’s 32 Landlocked Developing Countries (LLDCs) face high transport and trade costs due to challenges including the lack of direct access to sea ports, multiple border crossings, complex administrative transit and border procedures, and limited institutional capacities. However, taking…
Economic statistics are probably the first thing that comes to mind when people think of official statistics. The production of economic statistics is so central to the work of national statistical offices, and so essential for the operation of governments, businesses and societies, that it…
We all have a role to play in shaping our environment. From local engagement in environmental decision-making to citizen involvement in climate action, the principle of “environmental democracy” can be a powerful driver of sustainable development. Sharing successful approaches to putting this…
USD 1.5 billion – that’s the annual saving in logistics costs in Thailand following an investment of USD 7.5 million in setting up a national Single Window, based on UN/CEFACT Recommendations.Speeding up border crossing for trade with tools like Single Windows – which make it easier to input all…
To avoid damage to the environment, public health and the economy, adopting targets to reduce emissions and introducing measures to enforce them is essential. Providing a framework to facilitate these measures, UNECE assists countries in Eastern Europe, the Caucasus and Central Asia in…
Our climate is changing fast. What can be done to reduce these changes, to minimize their impacts, and to make societies, economies and ecosystems more resilient is increasingly at the core of national and international political debate.But to be effective, policy frameworks and plans for…
The 10th International Forum on Energy for Sustainable Development opened today in Bangkok, Thailand. Delegates to the Forum underscored the need for greater collaboration between governments and the private sector, and for inter-regional dialogue if the global energy transition is to be…
Geneva, 2 October 2019 I am deeply saddened to announce that Mr. Andrey Vasilyev, the Deputy Executive Secretary of the Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE), passed away this morning in Geneva, Switzerland, after a long illness. Mr. Vasilyev had a distinguished career…
From bad air quality in Paris, smog in New Delhi, air pollution alerts in Seoul – the air pollution problem, is omnipresent, particularly in big cities. Urgent efforts are needed to develop and implement the policies, investment programs and technologies required to reduce air pollution…
Countries across the UNECE region, and all over the world, will soon conduct censuses of all the people and homes within their borders – an exercise that most countries undertake once every ten years, the next ones being in or near to 2020. These censuses are vital for informing all kinds of…