Photo
stories from Instagram, #hlpf and #hlpf2018
What is it? Why does it matter?
What is it to do with UN Environment? Who attended? What happened this year?
Prof. Jeffrey
Sachs being featured in the United Arab Emirates's social media account (Image from Instagram)
Mandated in 2012 by the outcome
document of the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development
(Rio+20), "The Future We
Want", the Forum meets every year
as a journey towards the 2030
Agenda for Sustainable Development. The theme
for 2018 is "Transformation towards sustainable and resilient
societies". This year, the following Sustainable Development Goals have
been discussed and reviewed:
·
Goal 6. Clean water and sanitation
·
Goal 7. Affordable and clean energy
·
Goal 11. Sustainable cities and communities
·
Goal 12. Responsible consumption and
production
·
Goal 15. Life on land
·
Goal 17. Partnership for the goals
Canada
presenting its Voluntary National Review (Image from Instagram)
Question 2) What's the role of UN Environment?
Head of UN Environment Erik
Solheim and a number
of colleagues attended the Forum. In particular,
Erik spoke at an event on Monday that features our innovative partnership with
Google to use satellite data to track environmental indicators of Sustainable
Development Goals. Focusing initially on fresh water ecosystems such as rivers
and forests, Google will produce geospatial maps and data for a publicly
available platform. The platform is expected to be launched in October in
partnership with UN Environment.
“It’s basically a time slide...
you can go back in time, and what it does is to show you where water has
disappeared,” said our Ecosystem Division colleague Elisabeth Bernhardt in an interview with
the Thomson Reuters Foundation at the event. Click here
to read more about the event and the partnership.
Erik Solheim speaking alongside Dr. Mae Jemison,
100 Year Starship and former NASA astronaut, and Rebecca Moore, Director of
Google Earth (Photo Credit: Elisabeth Bernhardt)
Our Paris-based Sustainable Consumption and
Production Branch/Economy Division has also led and contributed to a number of
events on different themes, such as sustainable
fashion, the implementation
of Goal 12 and green
economy, in which our colleague Elisa
Tonda was a speaker. Apart from these events,
different parts of UN Environment had worked very hard to contribute to the
Forum’s preparation. These efforts include but are not limited to:
·
Our Paris-based Energy Branch/Economy
Division had developed and contributed to 11 policy briefs on Goal 7, as part
of a package of a total of 27
policy briefs as inputs to the Forum;
·
Our Law Division had prepared Issue Briefs
on Goal
6,7, 11, 12 and 15, as well as some analyses on the Voluntary National
Reviews of 2016-17 (shortversion; longversion) as inputs to the Forum;
·
Our Science Division provided data and
inputs to a
number of Sustainable Development Goal indicators
as part of the 2018 Sustainable Development Goals Report, the key preparatory
document for the Forum.
Rebecca Moore, Director of Google Earth, speaking at the partnership event with UN Environment (Photo Credit: Elisabeth Bernhardt)
Question 3) What's the take-away from the Forum?
One of
the key results is the ministerial declaration, which will shape the
discourse of on-going policy work, including the upcoming UN Environment
Assembly in March 2019. In the Draft Ministerial Declaration, the on-going
challenge of decoupling economic growth from resource use is emphasized. The
Declaration calls for scaling up efforts on sustainable consumption and
production, increased use of a life-cycle approach, accelerated action on the
10-Year Framework of Programmes and strategies to reduce food losses and waste.
“Technology” and “innovation” have been featured significantly in the document;
these concepts are likely to be trendy topics in the years to come. Click here for
the Draft Ministerial Declaration and other documents.
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