This Handbook, which updates the 2000 edition, incorporates all the adjustments, amendments and the decisions of the Parties up to the end of 2002. In addition, it gives valuable information on the implementation of these international environmental treaties. In this single volume, anyone interested in the issue can find the details of legal and policy actions taken by the world community to protect the ozone layer.
This report presents facts on the state of the environment, specific findings concerning the urban environment and the natural resources if Afghanistan and recommendations on how to improve environmental conditions and policies.
UNEP-WCMC has previously produced nine reports for the International Alligator and Crocodile Trade Study (IACTS) that have examined the international trade in crocodilian skins from 1980 to 2000. As in the previous reports, the data used in this report have been obtained from the CITES Trade Database that UNEP-WCMC maintains on behalf of the CITES Secretariat, with additional information provided by the Crocodile Farmers Association of Zimbabwe. The present report is intended to update these reports by detailed analysis of information for the years up to 2001. It also attempts to identify problem areas and to recommend, where possible, workable solutions. As in the lACTS report for 2002, this report presents information on trade levels in both classic skins (alligators and true crocodiles) and caimans and also trade in other products such as live animals and meat.
Colette W., Michelle, T., Edmund G., Tries, R.
This publication uses satellite images to document environmental changes during the last thirty years in 50 selected sites around the world.
The report provides updated information about the evolving environmental situation in Iraq, with a view to highlighting priority areas for action. In addition to other sources, it draws its information from two fact-finding missions that UNEP was able to field to Iraq in July and August 2003. Unfortunately, however, the security front remains unstable, seriously curtailing the United Nations margin of manoeuvre in Iraq.
This report is a part of the GEO cities project and is a tool that seeks to enhance the decision making process and promote strategic action. It was prepared within the PSIR framework -Pressure, State, Impact and Response. As such, the report addresses environmental issues in an integrated manner that appreciates the diverse dynamics in environmental issues.
Ecosystems and Human Well-being: A Framework for Assessment is the first product of the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MA), a four-year international work program designed to meet the needs of decision-makers for scientific information on the links between ecosystem change and human well-being. It was launched by United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan in June 2001, and the principal assessment reports will be released in 2005. The MA focuses on how changes in ecosystem services have affected human well-being, how ecosystem changes may affect people in future decades, and what types of responses can be adopted at local, national, or global scales to improve ecosystem management and thereby contribute to human well-being and poverty alleviation. Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity, the Convention to Combat Desertification, the Ramsar Convention on Wetlands, and the Convention on Migratory Species have asked the MA to provide scientific information to assist in the implementation of these treaties. The MA will also address the needs of other stakeholders, including the private sector, civil society, and indigenous peoples organizations. The MA is closely coordinated with other international assessments that focus in greater depth on particular sectors or drivers of change, such as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the Global International Waters Assessment. Scientific evaluations such as these help underpin various regular annual and biennial international reporting mechanisms, such as the Global Environmental Outlook, the World Resources Report, the Human Development Report, and the World Development Report.
This report presents the assessment of the Guinea Current region a vast region that includes the Guinea Current Large Marine Ecosystem as well as 28 international river basins shared by 27 countries. The region is characterised by large variations in hydrological conditions||from the Sahel deserts and drylands in the north to the tropical jungles of Congo in the south. This feature is reflected in the environmental problems of the region: Freshwater shortage was identified as the most stressing concern in the Volta and Niger basins while Pollution is a general concern in the humid basins and in the coastal and marine waters. Causal chain analysis and Policy option analysis was conducted for the identified priority concerns in the Volta, Niger and Comoe river basins and in the Guinea Current LME.