The Regional Forum on Sustainable Development for the UNECE Region will be held on Thursday, 1 March, and Friday, 2 March 2018, at the International Conference Centre Geneva (CICG). About: The Regional Forum on Sustainable Development (RFSD) follows up on and reviews the implementation of the 2030…
Soil sealing for urban and infrastructure development constitutes the most intense form of land degradation and affects all ecosystem services. Researchers and policy makers have become aware of this fact and call for limiting development and compensating for new soil sealing with unsealing measures…
As extreme weather events increase in intensity and frequency, building up the resilience of the poorest communities – often the most exposed to climate change – is critical. And financial services have a role to play. For poor families the impact of extreme weather, such as floods and droughts…
Rural women - a quarter of the world’s population - work as farmers, wage earners and entrepreneurs. They represent an important share of the agriculture workforce and their contribution to the rural economy is widely underestimated. They are concentrated in the informal economy in low-skilled, low…
To celebrate 30 years of activities the ESSC is organizing the SoWaSe-ESSC International Conference on ‘Soil and Water Security: Challenges for the next 30 years!’
Soil erosion severely threatens the soil resource and the sustainability of agriculture. After decades of research, this problem still persists, despite the fact that adequate technical solutions now exist for most situations. This begs the question as to why soil conservation is not more rapidly…
Over the past decade there have been extraordinary advances towards drought risk reduction with the development of new water-conserving technologies, and new tools for planning, vulnerability and impact assessment, mitigation, and policy. Drought and Water Crises: Integrating Science, Management…
Awareness of the threats to mental health posed by climate change leads to questions about the potential impacts on climate scientists because they are immersed in depressing information and may face apathy, denial and even hostility from others. But they also have sources of resilience.
The cultivation of bioenergy plants at fertile, arable lands increasingly results in new land use conflicts with food production and cannot be considered as sustainable, therefore. Marginal lands have been frequently considered as potential alternative for producing bioenergy from biomass. However…
Land use has important consequences for the environment, public health, economic productivity, inequality and social segregation. Land use policies are often complex and require co-ordination across all levels of government as well as across policy sectors. Not surprisingly, land use decisions can…
This paper conceptually integrates resilience and nexus approaches, developing a combined framework and indicating how it could effectively be operationalized in cases from mountain and mangrove social‐ecological systems. In doing so, it advances understanding of complex social‐ecological systems…
Do you want to find out why promoting gender equality and women’s empowerment can help deliver better environmental outcomes, and to figure out how you can do it? The course will help you better understand the linkages between gender and the environment. It will provide you with the knowledge and…
Throughout 2018, we are celebrating our diverse cultural heritage across Europe - at EU, national, regional and local levels. The aim of the European Year of Cultural Heritage is to encourage more people to discover and engage with Europe's cultural heritage, and to reinforce a sense of belonging to…
Today, the New Climate Economy launches its 2018 report, Unlocking the Inclusive Growth Story of the 21st Century: Accelerating Climate Action in Urgent Times. It demonstrates the benefits of a new low-carbon growth model and outlines how we can urgently accelerate efforts to achieve it. Bold action…
Migration is one of the defining features of the 21st century. It contributes significantly to all aspects of economic and social development everywhere, and as such will be key to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). But migration can also negatively impact development, and though…
Agroforestry is an integrated land use management that combines a woody component with a lower story agricultural production recognized as one of the most important tools to mitigate and adapt to climate change.
This report evaluates total disaster-related economic losses and fatalities between 1998 and 2017. The report finds that between 1998 and 2017, climate-related and geophysical disasters killed 1.3 million people and left a further 4.4 billion injured, homeless, displaced or in need of emergency…
In line with the EU global commitment to end hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition and the 2016 Commission Communication on Data, Information and Knowledge Management, the European Commission is launching the Knowledge Centre for Global Food and Nutrition Security (KC-FNS).
The Lancet Countdown: tracking progress on health and climate change was established to provide an independent, global monitoring system dedicated to tracking the health dimensions of the impacts of, and the response to, climate change. The Lancet Countdown tracks 41 indicators across five domains…
The 2014–2015 Global Food Policy Report, IFPRI’s flagship publication, puts into perspective the major food policy issues, developments, and decisions in 2014 and highlights challenges and opportunities for 2015
GLOBALANDS project aims to identify promising existing land use policies and to develop possible governance tools towards a more resource efficient and sustainable global land use.
This report focuses on certain types of extreme events and natural hazards at European scale that will be very likely amplified by ongoing climate change, i.e. landslides, avalanches, floods and storm surges.
The gender equality goal in Agenda 2030, like many other goals, was the subject of wide-ranging consultations, position papers, and extensive commentaries issued by women’s rights organizations and networks, academics, and UN agencies.
Realizing the ‘transformative potential’ of the Agenda in the decade and a half to come will be far from a technocratic exercise – and this is particularly true for the full realization of women's rights.
