Environment: Discover more

Earth is becoming hotter and more dangerous for everyone, everywhere. To tackle the root cause, countries must phase out fossil fuels – fast and fairly.

Unicef policy brief. Heatwaves are set to increase in frequency and intensity in the coming years as a result of accelerated global warming. Rising temperatures are expected to increase the risk of heat stress in children in 23 countries across Europe and Central Asia, and urgent measures are needed to protect the most vulnerable people of all: the youngest children.

Our world faces simultaneous crises, each threatening our collective existence. The last twelve months were the hottest on record, and the latest data shows that only 17 per cent of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are on track, with progress stalled or regressed on over one-third of the goals. Deep transformative solutions are urgently needed.

This report calls for the world to pay heed and respond to a range of emerging challenges that could disrupt planetary health and wellbeing. It presents insights on eight critical global shifts that are accelerating the triple planetary crisis of climate change, biodiversity and nature loss and pollution and waste.

Climate change impacts on marine fisheries resources are changing the distribution and productivity of marine organisms around the globe. Knowledge and model projections to estimate fish biomass gains and losses are crucial for informing climate-resilient fisheries management and adaptation planning. This report presents projections to 2100 of exploitable fish biomass under different climate scenarios, for all countries and territories. The report's elements are expected to support countries' efforts in updating their Nationally Determined Contributions to achieve the Paris Agreement goals.

This report reflects the findings of a systematic literature review jointly undertaken by the UNDP Global Policy Centre for Governance and the German Institute of Development and Sustainability. The report offers aggregated empirical insight from across the globe about how inclusive, effective and accountable governance systems produces positive effects on climate action. The report aims to galvanize development actors and stakeholders to invest in SDG 16 and the strengthening of governance systems, and to better identify pathways that raise the ambition and effectiveness of climate action.

The Guideline aims to raise awareness on development challenges related to sand and dust storm (SDS) risk, vulnerability, and exposure that are often not fully appreciated or considered by policy makers. The Guideline is voluntary and can be used by regonal, national, and sub-national authorities and actors responsible for designing and implementing SDS-related initiatives in key policy areas (e.g., agriculture, human health, infrastructure).

Damaging wildfires in many parts of the world in recent years have prompted an increase in demand for technical support for integrated fire management. As part of the response, FAO and the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) established the Global Fire Management Hub (Fire Hub), which was launched at the 8th International Wildland Fire Conference in May 2023. The aim of the Fire Hub is to strengthen the capacity of countries to implement integrated fire management and reduce the negative effects of wildfires on people, landscapes and the global climate.

The toolkit on nature-based solutions for comprehensive disaster and climate risk management (CRM-NbS Toolkit) aims to support countries in making nature-based solutions (NbS) an integral part of planning under the comprehensive disaster and climate risk management (CRM) approach considering both disaster risk reduction (DRR) and climate change adaptation (CCA) in an integrative manner. The tools and related information presented here build on the NbS-related technical resources developed for UNDRR’s CRM approach.

This edition of The State of the World’s Forests (SOFO) provides highlights on the state of the world’s forests and explores the transformative power of evidence-based innovation in the forest sector, ranging from new technologies to creative and successful policies and institutional changes, to new ways of getting finance to forest owners and managers. Eighteen case studies from around the world provide a glimpse at the wide range of technological, social, policy, institutional and financial forest-sector innovations – and combinations of these – being tested and implemented in real-world conditions. SOFO 2024 identifies barriers to, and enablers of, innovation and enumerates five actions for empowering people to apply their creativity in the forest sector to solve problems and scale up positive impacts.

In 2022, 182 million people, or 2.5 per cent of the world’s population, in 108 countries were affected by climate-related disasters. UNICEF estimates that its response to climate-related disasters may have reached around 28 million people in 2022, with at least one life-saving intervention in 32 low-and-middle-income countries, benefitting, in various ways, about 15 per cent of the world’s population affected by climate-related disasters in 2022. UNICEF’s estimated response to climate-related disasters was less than 3 per cent of its overall humanitarian response in 2022 – only half of which was funded – a challenge shared across partners working to respond to the growing humanitarian challenge. With children facing a historic confluence of crises,9 from conflict and displacement to infectious disease outbreaks, the impact of climate change represents a grim scenario for child health that the world must now confront.