Environmental issues and sustainable development

The main challenge facing humanity now is to sustain poverty eradication and development while shifting gears, according to a new report issued in advance of discussions on 10-11 January to prepare for next year’s United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development in Rio de Janeiro.

The United Nations has signed an agreement with the Republic of Korea to establish a new research and training facility on sustainable development.

The United Nations is launching the Decade for Deserts and the Fight against Desertification (2010-2020) today, an 11-year-long effort to raise awareness and action to improve the protection and management of the world’s drylands, home to a third of the world’s population and which face serious economic and environmental threats.

United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon today launched a new High-Level Panel on Global Sustainability that brings together some of the world’s leading policymakers and thinkers to formulate a new blueprint for sustainable growth and low-carbon prosperity for all on a planet under increasing strain, not least from climate change.

The focus on biodiversity for tomorrow’s celebration of the 2010 World Environment Day can spur public action to sustain the world’s forests, says Jan McAlpine, Director of the United Nations Forum on Forests Secretariat. “The theme of this year’s World Environment Day,‘Many Species. One Planet. One Future,’ crystalized the approach that the world must take in sustainably managing the world’s forests.

With pressures mounting on the world’s forests and drylands, the Secretariats of the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification and the United Nations Forum on Forests have agreed to team up in addressing the important institutional gap between drylands and forests — an essential step towards more effective implementation of sustainable forest and land management.

The first in a series of preparatory sessions leading to a follow-up in 2012 to the historic Rio de Janeiro Earth Summit of 1992 concluded today, following three days in which delegations strove to rekindle the spirit of Rio and shore up the foundation on which sustainable development had gained traction around the world.

Focusing their second day of talks on two themes identified by the General Assembly for discussion in 2012 — a green economy in the context of sustainable development and poverty eradication, and the institutional framework for sustainable development — participants at the first Preparatory Committee meeting for the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development urged that new concepts not sideline already agreed sustainable development platforms.

Against the still elusive implementation of the 1992 Earth Summit’s groundbreaking “Agenda 21”, delegations began a three-day session in New York today — the first in a series of preparatory meetings for the 20-year follow-on Conference in 2012 – hoping to rally renewed political will to meet the challenge of balancing economic growth and human progress with environmental sustainability.

Countries will open negotiations today on the road back to Rio, where, in 1992, countries agreed on the landmark Agenda 21, the blueprint for sustainable development. In 2012, countries will meet again in Rio de Janeiro to determine the next steps for achieving sustainable development — to manage and protect the ecosystem and bring about a more prosperous future for everyone.