Insights Blog

Digitization and advanced technologies have a key role to play in addressing a range of sustainability challenges, including sustainable e-waste management. E-WasteExchange.com is a digital platform that allows businesses and individuals to transfer their e-waste to government authorized e-waste recyclers.

Fossil fuel subsidies strain public budgets and contribute to climate change and local air pollution. But despite widespread agreement about the benefits of reforming fossil fuel subsidies, repeated international commitments to eliminate them, and valiant reform efforts by some countries, they persist.

Reaching our commitments to fight the threats of climate change, biodiversity loss and other environmental degradation requires concrete, innovative, and systematic approaches. The OECD-based Paris Collaborative on Green Budgeting brings together environmental, tax, budget and fiscal affairs experts to find solutions that make the green transition easier.

The UN Environment / TEEB Initiative (The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity) is collaborating with the United Nations Statistics Division (UNSD) and national partners to develop ecological accounts for South Africa. These accounts will enable decision makers to measure the long-term economic costs of degrading ecosystems to develop specific industries and compare them with the short-term economic gains of developing these industries.

What is the economic value of a tree? Since economics was founded as a discipline, there has been a single answer to this question: the value of a tree is equivalent to its market price. Through this lens, the economic value of the tree is simply its ‘exchange value’ in the market.

World Resource Institute (WRI) experts used the Aqueduct Water Risk Atlas to map and analyse water stress in China. The Aqueduct methodology, alongside policies that cap annual water usage, increase irrigation efficiency and protect water quality, are helping the country manage its water supply.

Natural assets provide many of the same services to communities as engineered assets but are generally not accounted for and/or are undervalued in asset management practices.

Sixteen leading banks, UN Environment Finance Initiative (UNEP FI) and Acclimatise, have published new methodologies that help banks understand how the physical risks and opportunities of a changing climate might affect their loan portfolios.

In 2012 a UN Environment-GIZ study recognized Peru’s potential “to become a leader and a model for other countries to follow in their transition to a green economy”, focusing on the biodiversity-based industry and bio-trade. Where does Peru's transition to a green economy stand now?

"There is a need to introduce sound and responsible policies and practices from fish to dish. What type of policies and practices are we talking about?" Hear more from Dr. Mukhisa Kituyi, Secretary-General of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development.