In progress at UNHQ

Environmental issues and sustainable development


ENV/DEV/1227
To broaden participation in next year’s United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development (Rio+20), the United Nations has invited representatives from nine key constituencies, known as major groups, to submit ideas on how the world can move towards sustainable development — a process aimed at promoting economic prosperity and improving the quality of life for everyone, while protecting the environment for present and future generations.
ENV/DEV/1213
The Commission on Sustainable Development ended its nineteenth session early Saturday morning, unable to agree on policy decisions on practical measures to advance chemical and waste management, transform transport and mining practices, and establish a long-awaited 10-Year Framework of Programmes for sustainable consumption and production patterns, which was first called for at the 2002 World Summit for Sustainable Development.
ENV/DEV/1212
A new partnership to assist local communities in managing ever-increasing amounts of waste — and the growing presence of chemicals and hazardous and toxic elements in the general waste stream — was launched today at the United Nations Commission on Sustainable Development.
ENV/DEV/1209
Twenty years after participants to the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro first recognized that unsustainable consumption and production patterns formed the biggest threat to the Earth’s capacity to satisfy human needs, that challenge continued to loom large and finding a framework to control it must be seen as a strategic priority, the Commission on Sustainable Development was told today, as it opened its three-day high-level segment.
ENV/DEV/1207
Meeting briefly at the end of the first week of its annual two-week session, the Commission on Sustainable Development was urged by its Chair to do its utmost — and perhaps go even further — to reach the goal of shaping critical global policies on transport; chemicals; waste management; mining; and a 10-Year Framework of Programmes on Sustainable Consumption and Production Patterns.
ENV/DEV/1206
Whether measured by greenhouse gas concentrations, deforestation rates or declining fish stocks, current unsustainable consumption and production patterns threatened to exceed the capacity of global ecosystems and the world community must accelerate efforts to pursue environmentally sound economic growth and “meet our commitments to future generations”, a top United Nations official told the Commission on Sustainable Development today, as it opened its nineteenth session.