Governments affirm role of UN Water Convention in building climate resilience
United Nations Economic Commission for Europe
UNECE fosters sustainable development by translating #GlobalGoals into norms and conventions that impact people’s lives
Amid floods in Central and Eastern Europe and droughts in Southern Africa, governments are turning to the UN Water Convention to help jointly address water-related impacts of the climate crisis. The surge in extreme weather events underscores the urgent need to strengthen climate resilience through cooperation in shared basins, as these devastating weather events continue to disrupt water, food, and energy security worldwide.?At the?10th Meeting of the Parties to the Water Convention, held in Ljubljana on 23-25 October, over 500 participants from 100 countries, including 40 high-level representatives gathered for the special session, "Our Waters, Our Future: Transboundary Water Cooperation to Power Climate Resilience,"?which?underscored that transboundary cooperation is essential for climate adaptation and mitigation, helping reduce water conflicts, sustain ecosystems and drive sustainable development. Read more
Photo credit: ENB IISD Anastasia Rodopoulou
Energy
UNECE to support Turkmenistan in green energy transition and methane emissions reduction
UNECE is supporting Turkmenistan to strengthen efforts on its sustainable energy transition and to deliver methane emissions reductions from the energy sector, in alignment with global climate objectives.?This was the focus of discussions this week between the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe and senior officials from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Turkmenistan.?A central point of discussion was Turkmenistan’s Global Energy Security and Sustainability Cooperation Alliance, an initiative launched by the Government of Turkmenistan at the World Government Summit and reaffirmed at the 79th session of the United Nations General Assembly. This initiative seeks to create a global framework for cooperation on energy security that emphasizes the transition to sustainable energy systems. The Alliance aims to pool resources, expertise, and innovative technologies to tackle energy resilience, enhance energy access, and ensure environmental sustainability. UNECE expressed its support for this initiative and its readiness to foster collaboration across governments, international organizations, and the private sector in addressing the growing challenges of energy transition. Read more
Air pollution
Montenegro to improve knowledge on air pollutant emission inventories
Sound emission inventories are the first step for designing effective clean air policies as they provide information about the main sources and the most acute air pollution problems in a country.?Under the?Convention on Long-range Transboundary Air Pollution?(Air Convention), UNECE has therefore been assisting countries in the region to improve emission inventories with a view to facilitating their ratification and/or implementation of the Air Convention and its key protocols. Most recently, UNECE has developed an e-learning course on?how to report emissions under the Convention, with the aim to explain the importance of emission inventories for clean air policy development, the requirements for emission inventory reporting and methods for emission estimation.?The course was recently presented to Montenegrin experts through a webinar that preceded the hands-on emission inventory workshop, which aimed to assist Montenegro with improving its emission inventory covered requirements and guidelines for reporting emissions under the Convention, as well as instructions on using templates. Read more
Publication of the Week
Public private partnerships
Kyrgyzstan emerges as one of the most advanced PPP markets in Central Asia
领英推荐
With 80 Public Private Partnerships (PPP) projects in its pipeline, more than 50 signed agreements, and a solid and balanced legal and regulatory framework, Kyrgyzstan is rapidly emerging as one of the most advanced PPP markets in Central Asia. Transport, energy, education and healthcare are among the key sectors where PPP investment is centred, with over USD 300 million invested in 2024 alone. The creation of the Kyrgyz PPP Center in 2019 and the new PPP law in 2021 represented watershed moments in the PPP development of Kyrgyzstan, which can now boost a varied pipeline of projects with large-scale national infrastructure projects and smaller scale high-impact community projects.?The latter play a crucial contribution to achieving the SDGs. Most of the projects being developed in Kyrgyzstan are small-scale, with lower risk profiles and greater efficiency gains, that can potentially reduce public sector risk and exposure.?These achievements were highlighted at the recent Third International PPP Conference held in Bishkek. Read more
Air pollution
Advancing knowledge on use of best available techniques to reduce air pollution from industry
Best available techniques (BATs) have emerged as a key policy tool to prevent and control the emission of industrial pollutants, and thereby to ensure the protection of human health and the environment. Applying BATs to different sources is a key requirement for Parties to the latest three protocols to the?UNECE Convention on Long-range Transboundary Air Pollution, e.g. the?Protocol on Heavy Metals, the?Protocol on Persistent Organic Pollutants?and the?Protocol to Abate Acidification, Eutrophication and Ground-level Ozone (Gothenburg Protocol).?To foster exchange of experience on the application of BATs among countries in the region, UNECE in cooperation with the Convention’s?Task Force on Techno-Economic Issues (TFTEI)?and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) recently organized a workshop on impacts of air pollution and implementation of BATs.?The workshop provided the latest findings on environmental and health impacts of air pollution and promoted the understanding and implementation of best available techniques (BATs) across the UNECE region with particular focus on countries in Eastern Europe, the Caucasus and Central Asia. Read more
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