Climate and Environment

A woman poses in a field in Ardabil, Iran.
Unsplash/Habib Dadkhah

Protect the environment, prevent pandemics, ‘nature is sending us a clear message’

5 June 2020
Global

On this year’s World Environment Day, celebrated on June 5, the UN is drawing links between the health of the planet, and human health, and highlighting the importance of protecting biodiversity, the system that supports life.

The Earth, an image created from photographs taken by the Suomi NPP satellite.
NASA

COVID-19 pandemic, an ‘unprecedented wake-up call’ for all inhabitants of Mother Earth

22 April 2020

In his message for International Mother Earth Day this Wednesday, UN Secretary-General António Guterres acknowledged that all eyes are on the COVID-19 pandemic, which he flagged as “an unprecedented wake-up call”

Extreme weather in Bosnia's mountains.
WMO/Vladimir Tadic

‘Count every drop, every drop counts’: UN weather agency calls for better water data on World Meteorological Day

23 March 2020
Global

Floods, extreme rainfall, droughts and melting glaciers…many of the major signs of climate change involve water. On this year’s World Meteorological Day, the UN weather agency (WMO) is reinforcing the message of World Water Day, by focusing on the links between climate and water, and calling for better water-related data.

In Belarus, peat bogs like the one pictured here, are being revitalized and act as effective carbon sinks, which can absorb and capture carbon dioxide (CO2) from the atmosphere and reduce its concentration in the air.
UNDP Belarus

World Water Day: Often overlooked, water resources are essential part of solution to climate change

22 March 2020
Global

On World Water Day, the United Nations launched a flagship report which says that reducing both the impacts and drivers of climate change will require major shifts in the way we use and reuse the Earth’s limited water resources. 

Mbandza Forest, Congo
UNICEF/UNI212596/Tremeau

Turn around deforestation in 2020, the ‘Nature Super Year’, says Guterres

21 March 2020
Global

On the International Day of Forests, which falls on Saturday, UN chief António Guterres is calling for 2020, which has been referred to as a “nature super year”, to be the year that the world turns the tide on deforestation and forestry loss.

A student at Colegio San Judas Tadeo, a member of UNESCO's ASPnet programme
© UNESCO

Climate change: educating students to fight the crisis

11 March 2020
Global

With the latest UN climate report containing worrying evidence that climate change is having a major effect on all aspects of the environment, how can teachers help children and adults to sort through the growing mass of information, avoid being overwhelmed, and come to an understanding of the challenges, and potential solutions, to what the UN Secretary-General has called “an existential crisis”?

An unusually early and exceptionally intense heatwave has set new temperature records in Europe, posing a major threat to people's health, agriculture and the environment.
WMO Video screen shot

Flagship UN study shows accelerating climate change on land, sea and in the atmosphere

10 March 2020
Global

A wide-ranging UN climate report, released on Tuesday, shows that climate change is having a major effect on all aspects of the environment, as well as on the health and wellbeing of the global population.

Secretary-General António Guterres delivers an address at a 'Special Talk on Sustainable Development and Climate Change', in Islamabad, Pakistan.
UN News/May Yaacoub

In Pakistan, Guterres urges world to step up climate action, praises support to Afghan refugees

16 February 2020
Asia Pacific

UN Secretary-General António Guterres on Sunday began a three-day visit to Pakistan, recognizing the country’s decades of “outstanding generosity and solidarity” as one of the world’s largest hosts of refugees, and highlighting its commitment to climate action.  

Norrmjöle Beach out of Umeå in northern Sweden.
WMO/Ulla Nordlinder

Ocean Conference has potential to be a ‘global game-changer’

4 February 2020

The second global Ocean Conference taking place in Portugal in a few months’ time promises to be “a critical moment” for the health of life under water and on land, the President of the UN General Assembly said on Tuesday, as preparations got underway.

The session on climate emergency at Jaipur Literature Festival. (L to R Ms. Renata Dessallien, resident coordinator of UN in India; Ms. Namita Waikar, managing editor of online journal PARI; Ms. Shubhangi Swarup, writer and filmmaker; Ms. Dia Mirza, Actress and UN Advocate for Sustainable Development.
UN India/Yangerla Jamir

India: Climate emergency message resonates at world’s largest literature festival – UN News special report from Jaipur

29 January 2020
Asia Pacific

Against the backdrop of India’s famed “pink city” of Jaipur, the world’s largest literature festival hosted the UN’s top representative in the country on Monday, who told audience members attending a special session on the climate emergency, that the Organization is working flat out to slow the pace of damaging climate change.