Climate and Environment

A framework for climate change “cannot wait,” Grenada’s Foreign Minister said today, joining other leaders from Latin America and the Caribbean calling for urgent action in the United Nations General Assembly.

Actor and environmental activist Robert Redford paid his first visit to the United Nations Headquarters in New York this week to address the UN General Assembly’s High-Level Meeting on Climate Change, which aimed to energize multilateral cooperation on the issue ahead of the UN Climate Change Conference in Paris later this year. In the French capital, countries will discuss an agreement intended to succeed to the landmark Kyoto Protocol on reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon today welcomed the release of Pope Francis’ Papal Encyclical in which the leader of the Catholic Church deplored climate change as one of the principal challenges facing humanity and called for a ‘new dialogue’ about shaping the future of our planet.

As her nation emerged from crisis, and in the face of great personal tragedy, Rose Mukankomeje took the initiative to bring Rwandans together to protect their natural resources and, in the process, restore communities devastated by conflict.

A United Nations-commissioned study shows that land acquisitions are on the increase in Africa, Latin America, Central Asia and Southeast Asia, raising the risk that poor people will lose access to land, water, and other resources.

Climate change will feature on the agenda of Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon's meetings in Chicago with local leaders, business executives, United Nations partners and high school students, officials said on the eve of his trip to the US city.

Accepting the Nobel Peace Prize today, this year’s laureates – Al Gore and the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) – issued a call for bold and immediate actions to curb global warming.

Cattle-rearing generates more global warming greenhouse gases, as measured in CO2 equivalent, than transportation, and smarter production methods, including improved animal diets to reduce enteric fermentation and consequent methane emissions, are urgently needed, according to a new United Nations report released today.

The United Nations General Assembly wrapped up its annual high-level debate today by hearing calls for continued assistance to small island nations struggling to deal with development and environmental issues.