UN Environment Assembly – Major Groups and Stakeholders Forum
The United Nations Environment Assembly (UNEA) is the world’s highest-level decision-making body on environmental matters, bringing together all 193 UN Member States. Held every two years, UNEA sets priorities for global environmental policy and advances the development of international environmental law. It provides leadership, fosters political commitment, and catalyzes intergovernmental action on pressing environmental challenges. UNEA also serves as the governing body of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP).
Each session of UNEA brings negotiators, ministers, experts, and observers to Nairobi to review progress on existing resolutions and negotiate new ones. A key part of UNEA’s structure includes the Major Groups and Stakeholders, which represent civil society. These include women’s groups, youth and children, NGOs, Indigenous Peoples, farmers, the scientific community, local authorities and cities, and the business sector. We came together for a two day forum to discuss the important resolutions to be discussed and how civil society can influence the policy makers.
Resolutions under discussion include:
- Climate resilience of coral reefs
- Conservation of karst ecosystems (landscapes underlain by limestone, shaped through dissolution to form ridges, fissures, towers, and sinkholes)
- Preservation of glaciers and the broader cryosphere
- Protection of deep-sea ecosystems
- Meaningful participation of children and youth in environmental governance
- Sustainable solutions through sport for a resilient planet
- Antimicrobial resistance
- Sound management of chemicals and waste
- Management and prevention of fires
- Environmental sustainability of artificial intelligence systems
- Sargassum seaweed blooms
- Addressing crimes that affect the environment
- Environmentally sound management of minerals and metals, including guidance for mineral-resource circularity
- Strengthening the role of UNEP Headquarters in Nairobi to address global environmental challenges
- Maximizing resources through improved coherence and synergies among multilateral environmental agreements
- Strengthening international efforts to combat desertification and land degradation, restore degraded land, and promote sustainable land management
- Enhancing global ocean action to tackle climate change, marine biodiversity loss, and pollution
We give thanks that the Anglican Communion is part of this vibrant group of passionate representatives of civil society who believe in working together to find sustainable solutions for a resilient planet!.
The Faith communities form a subgroup of the NGO major group and during UNEA had several side events and a discussion on the way forward.
#UNEA7 #GMGSF