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By Lowana Veal
REYKJAVIK (IDN) – On September 5, 2017 – two years after the United Nations adopted Agenda 2030 with its 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and 169 targets – the Nordic countries jointly launched the Generation 2030 programme with the aim of speeding up implementation of Agenda 2030 through official Nordic cooperation.
A budget of 1.925 million dollars was allocated for the project, which runs until December 2020.
By Josephine Latu-Sanft
For the eminent American actor and director Dustin Hoffman sunshine and coconut milk are "the two basic items necessary to sustain life". The German playwright and poet Bertolt Brecht compared love to a coconut "which is good while it is fresh". In the Pacific, coconut is king, writes Josephine Latu-Sanft.
LONDON | PORT VILA (IDN) – Known as the ‘tree of life’, locals make use of every part of the tree to survive – the fruit for eating, husks for fuelling fires, fronds for making multiuse baskets, and the trunk for building houses.
By ACP Press
BRUSSELS (ACP-IDN) – Recent studies have shown that overhunting for wild meat is threatening hundreds of wildlife species with extinction, with the result that many indigenous peoples and rural communities are deprived of food and income.
An initiative of the African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) Group of States, the Sustainable Wildlife Management (SWM) Programme, established to tackle these challenges, has published their first newsletter to bring attention to these issues.
By Lisa Vives, Global Information Network
NEW YORK | ACCRA (IDN) – Environmental groups in Ghana are waging an eleventh-hour battle to stop the government of Ghana from opening the Atewa Forest Reserve – a crown jewel of biodiversity and a source of three rivers – to commercial large-scale bauxite mining.
Their resistance conforms to the Fourth United Nations Environment Assembly's resolution on mining resource governance in Nairobi from March 11-15. The resolution stresses in particular Sustainable Development Goal 7 calling for 'affordable and clean energy' and Goal 12 on 'responsible consumption and production', "reminding the important contribution of mining to their achievement".
By Justus Wanzala
NAIROBI (IDN) – Global gross domestic product has doubled since 1970, enabling immense progress, and lifting of billions of people out of poverty. At the same time, this economic growth has been fueled by a relentless demand for natural resources. At no point in time nor at any level of income, has our demand for natural resources wavered, notes the Global Resources Outlook 2019.
"Our consume and throwaway models of consumption have had devastating impacts on our planet," says the report presented during the fourth session of the United Nations Environment Assembly (UNEA) in Nairobi, Kenya, March 11-15.
By Devendra Kamarajan
NAIROBI (IDN) – A new agreement signed in Kigali, the capital city of Rwanda, promises to fight global warming. Known as the Kigali Amendment to the Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer, came into force on January 1, 2019.
According to UN Environment, it will reduce the projected production and consumption of powerful greenhouse gasses termed as hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) by more than 80 per cent over the next 30 years.
By Ronald Joshua
GENEVA (IDN) – Bahrain, India, Lesotho and South Africa have won 2018 United Nations Investment Promotion Awards for excellence in boosting investment into sectors that will have social and economic benefits and help countries meet the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
Organized by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), the awards honour investment promotion agencies (IPAs) and their governments for their achievements, but also showcase best practices in attracting investment into SDG-related projects that can inspire investment promotion practitioners in developing and developed countries.
By Fabiola Ortiz
SAN JOSE, Costa Rica (IDN) – It has been twenty two years since Costa Rica embarked on its national program of payment for environmental services (PES), the first in the world to start a nationwide scheme for compensating landowners for keeping the forests standing for people and the planet.
Now that the world struggles to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and limit the global temperature rise by the end of the century, this Central American nation of five million people has served as an example of public policies addressing the taxation of fossil fuels in favour of the protection of nature. The country pledges to become carbon neutral by 2021.
By Justus Wanzala
NAIROBI (IDN) – African governments have been availing of two conferences at the UN Environment Headquarters in the Kenyan capital in September to gear up for the Biological Diversity Summit in Sharm el Sheikh, Egypt, and the Climate Summit in Katowice, Poland.
The African Ministerial Conference on the Environment (AMCEN) from September 17 to 19 provided an opportunity to prepare for the 14th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD-COP14) from November 17 to 29, 2018 in Sharm el Sheikh, Egypt.
Viewpoint by David Suttie*
ROME (IDN) – Rural people often migrate seasonally with their herds, or to join the harvest in other districts. They frequently travel to towns and cities to trade, do temporary jobs, or advance their education.
In some regions of the world, nomadic cultures are commonplace. Migration is one of the most debated topics and policymakers are fully aware of how much people move around. What is lacking is reliable data – movement is very difficult to capture in official statistical systems.
