The latest meeting of the “world’s parliament on the environment” opened in Nairobi, Kenya, on Monday with a clear call for stronger global action to address the “triple planetary crisis” of climate change, nature loss and pollution.
More than 7,000 delegates from 182 countries are scheduled to take part in the sixth session of the United Nations Environment Assembly (UNEA-6) which runs through Friday.
Delegates are convening in the Kenyan capital as climate change intensifies, a million species face the risk of extinction, and pollution remains among the world’s leading causes of premature death.
“We’ve all felt and seen the impacts – baking heat, intense storms, vanishing nature and species, failing soils, deadly dirty air, oceans stuffed with plastic waste and much more,” Inger Andersen, Executive Director of the UN Environment Programme (UNEP), said in her opening press statement.
Although these impacts fall hardest upon the poor and vulnerable, who are least responsible for them, nobody is immune, she added.
The UNEA is the world’s highest decision-making body on the environment and its membership includes all 193 UN Member States. It was created in 2012 as an outcome of the UN Conference on Sustainable Development (Rio+20), held in Brazil.
The Assembly meets every two years to set priorities for global environmental policies and develop international environmental law. Decisions and resolutions taken there also define the work of UNEP, which is based in Nairobi.
This year, focus will be on negotiating resolutions on issues ranging from nature-based solutions and highly hazardous pesticides to land degradation and drought. The changing environmental aspects of minerals and metals will also be up for intense discussion.