Global Early Warning Systems needed: Creating Partnerships to Cope with Natural Disasters
Every year in the past two decades, more than 200 million people, on average, have been affected by natural hazards. Disasters have caused a massive loss of life and negative long-term social, economic and environmental consequences. Vulnerable societies have been deeply affected, particularly in developing countries with less coping capacity.
Sustainable Development And Climate Change: A Business Perspective
Twenty years after the Brundtland Report asserted it was in the common interest of all peoples and nations to establish policies for sustainable development, the pace of sustainability is finally accelerating. Notwithstanding a number of serious political and security issues that politicians are struggling to effectively address, the case for sustainability in a global context has become more apparent, and even mainstreamed in some countries, during the last few years.
Sustainable Development within the Climate Context
Sustainable development is an important requirement of the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) set up under the Kyoto Protocol. It helps to maintain environmental integrity and should be assessed rigorously prior to any investment in a CDM project. The benefits include certainty in CDM application, reduction of risk to investors, developers and owners, and the provision of cost-free assistance to developing countries, which could reduce the enormous divide between the North and the South.
Industrial and Rural Energy in China: Innovative Private-Sector Initiatives Lead the Way
China's massive industrial sector is an economic juggernaut, helping to drive national gross domestic product (GDP) growth rates of around 10 per cent per year. But while the country's highly productive factories and plants may be boosting national prosperity, their rapid expansion carries with it a serious environmental burden and costly energy inefficiencies that are increasingly becoming a barrier to China's sustainable development, thus contributing to climate change.
The UN General Assembly Advances the Global Agenda
Presiding over the sixty-first session of the General Assembly, I quickly learned that an effective president needs to be able to juggle many issues and remain in close contact with key negotiating groups and regional constituencies.
The Secretary-General's Agenda: Prioritizing Commitment To Combat Global Poverty
As the first Secretary-General of the United Nations elected in the twenty-first century, Ban Ki-moon has inherited responsibilities that span the globe and run the gamut of issues, which included peace, prosperity and everything in between.
A Special Partnership with the UN: A European Perspective
When Ban Ki-moon was appointed eighth Secretary-General of the United Nations on 13 October 2006, he declared: The world's people will not be fully served unless peace, development and human rights -- the three pillars of the UN -- are advanced together with equal vigour.
The Secretary-General's Agenda: Indispensable For Sustainable Development
Global sustainable development and security are deeply interconnected, a fact that is increasingly recognized by world leaders. Sustainable development signifies the challenge of combining economic development with environmental sustainability.
The Secretary-General's Agenda: Progress On Disarmament Required For Global Security
It is an honour to suggest agenda items and top priorities in international security for Ban Ki-moon's first term in office as Secretary-General of the United Nations. However, it is also a daunting prospect, given his special expertise in foreign affairs and international security policy.
Sixty-first General Assembly: First Committee (Disarmament and International Security)
The First Committee, one of the main bodies of the General Assembly, enforces disarmament and the non-proliferation of weapons. In 2006, it made huge strides in international security when it adopted resolutions condemning surplus weapons stockpiles and agreeing on deeper international cooperation in the tracing of black market arms.
The Chronicle Interview: 'We are more advanced in peacekeeping than in peacebuilding efforts'
Today's peacekeeping is reaching unprecedented levels. There are, as we speak, roughly 100,000 personnel -- military, police, civilian -- in 18 missions around the world.
Sixty-first General Assembly: Second Committee (Economic and Financial)
The Second Committee continued to tackle the enormous dilemmas of economic inequality, poverty and environmental degradation. Many developing countries expressed their frustrations at the lack of progress on the World Trade Organization (WTO) Doha Round of multilateral negotiations, aimed at increasing economic growth by lowering trade barriers worldwide.
A Special Partnership With the UN: An African Perspective
Even before formally assuming office, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon had already made it very clear, in a series of public statements, that Africa would be among his highest priorities.
Sixty-first General Assembly: Third Committee (Social, Humanitarian and Cultural)
The Third Committee during the sixty-first session of the General Assembly had at the top of its agenda the rights of women, children and migrants, as well as an evaluation of the work of the recently established Human Rights Council, and approved a draft resolution naming the right to development as a major goal of this new UN body.
A Special Partnership With the UN: An Asian Perspective
The mission of the United Nations to carve out a safe, prosperous and just world from the ashes of the Second World War remains today an urgent global undertaking. For the past 61 years of its existence, the Organization's major organs contributed significantly, and greatly, to this end.