Andean ecosystems are under threat from unsustainable agricultural and rangeland management practices, fire, deforestation, and overexploitation of natural resources. To overcome this challenge, Peru and Ecuador have put in place Conservation agreements to help stem damage to the Andean region’s globally significant carbon stocks and biodiversity.
This is one of the main achievements of a 2014-2018 GEF project led by UN Environment (UNEP) at three sites in Ecuador and two in Peru.
The artisanal small-scale gold mining (ASGM) sector exposes miners to toxic mercury when they use the chemical to extract gold from ore. However, with the right policies and market incentives, ASGM presents an opportunity to fight mercury use and contamination, protecting miners' health and the environment at the same time.
The Global Environment Facility (GEF) is looking to do just that through the Global Opportunities for Long-term Development (GOLD) program.
Mercury use in ASGM
By Kathy Calvin, president and CEO, the UN Foundation
By Erik Solheim, head of UN Environment
For ages, our safety, security and prosperity meant mining - literally and figuratively - the resources around us.
Our impact on the commons - our oceans, our atmosphere, biodiversity, and other complex global systems - was rarely noticed. For many, damaging something like our atmosphere was simply too abstract.
Forty-five minutes from vibrant and busy Marrakesh, in the province of Al Haouz, a breath-taking scenery of green terraces takes over the landscape to reveal the lush of High Atlas Mountains. The mountains serve as a barrier between the northern Mediterranean climates and southern desert climates of the Sahara. The ecosystem represents a consistent landscape and is home to rich forest biodiversity with endemic tree species, abundant flora and aromatic plants.
By Peter Bakker, president of the World Business Council for Sustainable Development
For decades, the “tragedy of the commons” has been a useful tool for understanding and explaining the risks of undervaluing shared resources. Today such issues – those of the “global commons” – touch upon almost every aspect of our daily lives.
What was once a hypothetical theory is now a global reality – and it’s our responsibility to do whatever we can to address it.
“I have a degree in Applied Chemistry, but I did not know much about Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs) and their damaging nature until I started working on pesticide management in 2007 in Hubei Province. Through my job I learnt that improper dismantling and processing of e-waste releases organic pollutants that have a detrimental impact on human health and the environment. To give you an idea of the scale of the issue – it has been estimated that in 2015 alone, the number of e-waste items recycled in China amounted to 152.74 million pieces!
“On Saturday 16 April of this year, my town was torn apart by a terrible earthquake – one of the worst that has ever happened here. Everything collapsed, from streetlights to houses; motor vehicles were crushed and, worst of all, was that people were trapped under all the debris from fallen buildings. Many people died. It was a heartbreaking and desperate time.
This story started in 1992, when UNDP invited me to lead a project team for a proposed GEF-financed project on marine pollution prevention in the seas of East Asia. This turned out to be the catalyst for a vibrant collaboration among governments, private institutions, researchers and citizens to safeguard the oceans and coasts of South East Asia.
“I remember clearly that it all started in Sofia, Bulgaria, in the autumn of 1991. As an official of the Slovak Ministry of Environment, I had an opportunity to listen to a presentation by the first Chief Executive Officer of the GEF, Mohamed El-Ashry, in which he presented a vision for an environmental recovery programme for the Danube River Basin.
