Environmental issues and sustainable development

The World Meteorological Organization and its partners today released the first Hydromet Gap report, which states that an estimated 23,000 lives could be saved annually and at least $162 billion per year in potential benefits could be realized by improving weather forecasts, early warning systems, and climate information.

Following are UN Secretary-General António Guterres’ remarks at the launch of the first Hydromet Gap report, today:

Inequality and exclusion have deeply impaired the ability to contain the COVID-19 pandemic, which, in turn, further widened such disparity, demonstrating the dangerous links between health and inequality, experts warned, as the high‑level political forum on sustainable development moved into the third day of its two-week session.

The World Meteorological Organization reports that the recent heatwave in Canada and the United States had major impacts on people, animals and vegetation, and that so many records were broken in June regarding high temperatures worldwide that it was hard to keep track.

Following is the text of UN Secretary-General António Guterres’ video message to the Berlin Forum on Chemicals and Sustainability, today:

Long-term social protection measures must replace temporary COVID-19 pandemic responses to help countries regain traction towards realizing the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, delegates and panel experts said today, as the high-level political forum moved into the second day of its two-week session.

Recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic and its devastating socioeconomic consequences must not leave anyone behind, speakers told the high-level political forum on sustainable development as it opened its 2021 session today.

The World Food Programme (WFP) is warning today that, without urgent funding, the displacement crisis in the north of Mozambique could become a hunger emergency.  Displacement has left at least 730,000 people in Cabo Delgado without access to their land and no means of earning a living.

Following is the text of UN Secretary-General António Guterres’ video message to the Austria World Summit, held today:

Following are UN Secretary-General António Guterres’ remarks to the fifth United Nations Special Thematic Session on Water and Disasters:  “Building Back Better towards a More Resilient and Sustainable Post-COVID-19 World”, in Brussels today: