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Environmentalism
Social responsibilities of businesses
Sustainability
Sustainable business
Sustainable development
Greening the Blue Report 2020: The 2020 report provides a snapshot of the UN System's environmental impacts throughout 2019, and the activities underway to reduce them. This year's report includes 2019 data on greenhouse gas emissions, waste, water, and environmental management from nearly 60 entities across the UN System, representing approximately 310,000 personnel. The most important action in a trajectory to climate neutrality is however emissions reductions. The report shows how, in 2019, 28 UN entities, five more than the previous year, are engaged in implementing environmental management systems. A number of best practices show how these efforts are operated at ground level and what concrete results they have been able to obtain.
Impacts of Sand and Dust Storms on Oceans: New Scientific Report- Impact of Sand and Dust Storms on Oceans. Each year, an estimated two billion tons of sand and dust is raised into the atmosphere; and one-quarter of this reaches the oceans. With the aim to help policy-makers in their efforts to tackle this widespread challenge, UNEP's Science Division assessed the latest scientific knowledge on the impact of these large dust clouds on the oceans. A problem that affects the health of marine systems around the world and the well-being of the people that depend on them for their survival.
Making Peace with Nature: The first UNEP synthesis report presents a scientific blueprint for how climate change, biodiversity loss, and pollution can be tackled jointly within the framework of the Sustainable Development Goals. The report serves to translate the current state of scientific knowledge into crisp, clear, and digestible facts-based messages that all the world's citizens can relate to and follow up on. It first provides an Earth diagnosis of current and projected human-induced environmental change, putting facts and interlinkages in perspective with smart infographics. Building on this diagnosis, the report identifies the shifts needed to bridge the gap between current activities and those necessary to achieve sustainable development.
People-Smart Sustainable Cities: This publication advocates a "cities-based" approach to sustainable development which recognizes the central and integrating role that cities and urban living play in developing sustainability. It highlights that, similarly to the financial crisis of 2008, the COVID-19 (coronavirus) pandemic has shown that different cities have different capacities to cope with crises. Both crises disproportionally affected different cities and population groups; the most vulnerable suffering most. Cities need to develop innovative methods to confront infectious diseases without relying on drastic lockdown restrictions.
Sustainability Development Outlook 2019: There has been some significant progress made towards achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) since their adoption in 2015. Notwithstanding this progress, gathering storms of weakening global economic growth, rising income inequality, unabated global warming, and climate change, and escalating conflict are posing serious threats to SDG implementation. On the other hand, rapid technological advances, especially renewable energy technologies, offer some hope for accelerating SDG progress. Sustainable Development Outlook 2019: Gathering Storms and Silver Linings identifies some of these key challenges and underscores the imperative of bold and urgent policy actions for addressing them. It identifies the interlinkages among these challenges, highlighting the need for addressing them with an integrated approach instead of tackling them as stand-alone challenges to be resolved sequentially and in isolation. The challenges highlighted here, of course, not only undermine SDG progress; they also risk changing the overall context of sustainable development, and, because they cut across all the SDGs and affect all countries, they can potentially undermine the overall implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.
Sustainable Trade in Resources: This report looks at trade flows of material resources and their environmental impacts. It also demonstrates how both multilateral trade rules and regional trade agreements can be used proactively to advance the circular and greener economy and minimize the environmental impacts associated with resource extraction. The debate over the impacts of COVID-19 on the structure of global production and global supply chains is ongoing, with consideration being given to the length of existing supply chains, sourcing decisions, and the classification of strategic goods.
Toward a Pollution-Free Planet: In this issue of Our Planet, policymakers, experts and business leaders examine the growing threat of pollution, its enormous impacts on people and the environment, and the innovative solutions that can help us move towards a pollution-free planet. This publication contains ideas and calls to advance the forward-thinking solutions to pollution that the world urgently need. It constitutes an important initial stride along the road toward a pollution-free planet.
This selection of journals is open access (OA), meaning you do not have to have a library or database subscription to access them. For a full selection of OA titles, you can visit the Directory of Open Access Journals. Please note, not all OA journals are peer-reviewed. If you have any questions, contact your librarian!