24 September 2012: The International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) is providing a loan of $46 million and grant of $1 million to the Chinese Government to support the Hunan Agricultural Rural Infrastructure Improvement Project.
20 September: The UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) held the 59th session of the UNCTAD Trade and Development Board, which included a session on the sustainable structural transformation in Africa, highlighting challenges for African countries in making structural changes to their economies, as well as opportunities offered by greening economic growth.
September 2012: UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has released his annual report on the work of the Organization. The report includes nine sections and highlights Ban's five-year Action Agenda, which identifies opportunities for joint action. The section on promotion of sustained economic growth and sustainable development discusses: the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs); the UN Conference on Sustainable Development (UNCSD, or Rio+20); climate change; Sustainable Energy For All (SE4ALL); and the global jobs crisis.
7 September 2012: Delegates and high-level representatives shared experiences and advocated developing integrated policies that build partnerships with the private sector and encourage financial innovation on climate-smart agriculture during the Second Global Conference on Agriculture, Food Security and Climate Change: Hunger for Action.
5 September 2012: Noting the challenges of ensuring food security, adapting agriculture to climate change, and minimizing agriculture's contribution to climate change, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN (FAO) has released a paper exploring the relationship between increased resource use efficiency for agricultural productivity in the context of meeting sustainable development and climate change objectives.
17 September 2012: Concluding the 66th Session of the UN General Assembly (UNGA), outgoing President Nassir Abdulaziz al-Nasser recalled the Assembly's focus on disaster prevention and response, including local resilience and risk mitigation, and on sustainable development and global prosperity. Also during the plenary meeting, the Assembly took decisions on Africa, the World Conference on Indigenous Peoples, and the distribution of seats in the open working group on sustainable development (OWG).
13 September 2012: The Executive Director of the International Energy Agency (IEA), Maria van der Hoeven, recently inaugurated two solar-power plants in the mountainous Ladakh region of India as part of the village electrification component of the country's push for renewable energy.
11 September 2012: The UN University Institute for Water, Environment and Health (UNU-INWEH) and InterAction Council (IAC), along with the Walter and Duncan Gordon Foundation, have published a report calling for the UN Security Council to take stronger action on water issues. “The Global Water Crisis: Addressing an Urgent Security Issue” presents the outcomes of a May 2011 meeting of IAC, and outlines steps in the Québec Declaration on the World Water Crisis, which resulted from that meeting.
7 September 2012: The Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security Program (CCAFS) has released a study on the incremental adoption of climate-resilient farming by smallholders in East Africa. Farmers' strategies to cope with climate change, in the countries surveyed, include: adoption of short-cycle crop varieties and drought tolerant crops; planting of trees on farms; and intercropping.
9 August 2012: Bhutan hosted participants from eight Asia-Pacific countries in two high-level workshops addressing green and inclusive economics and development. In the keynote address, Bhutan's Minister of Labor and Human Resources, Lyonpo Dorji Wangdi, highlighted environmental resources as a critical asset for economic development and poverty reduction in developing countries.
| Earth Negotiations Bulletin (ENB) |
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| Conference Reporting Services (CRS) |
