Copenhagen, December 2009 United Nations Environment Program – After one of the most wide-ranging and painstaking exercises ever undertaken across the United Nations system, the organization today announced its greenhouse gas footprint as part of a first step to manage these emissions downwards.
The work, coordinated by the UN’s Environmental Management Group (EMG), has covered emissions arising from the various UN agencies and its headquarters as well as field operations and peacekeeping missions in Africa and beyond.
The report, compiled in response to the UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s determination to make the UN system a climate-friendly body, indicates that the biggest international body is emitting the equivalent of 1.7 million tonnes of carbon dioxide annually, of which approximately 1 million tonnes comes from peacekeeping operations.
The total figure represents an emissions profile equal to 3.3 per cent of that produced by New York City-the UN’s host metropolis. Achim Steiner, Executive Director of the UN Environment Programme and Chair of the EMG, said:
“It is incumbent on every country and every organization including the UN to first measure, and then to measure down, its environmental impact”.
”The UN, under the leadership of Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, is determined to be part of the solution. This first ever inventory is just a stepping stone towards supporting the kind of goals that scientists deem necessary to combat climate change while realizing a low carbon UN as part of a transition to a 21st century resource efficient international body,” he added.
| The inventory uses a common approach and methodology. It gives a detailed picture of the total footprint of the biggest international body and its more than 200 000 personnel. It also includes an overview of the initial steps that have been taken by the organization to manage its greenhouse gas emissions as well as a few examples of offsetting.The aggregated GHG emissions of the UN system organizations for their facility operations travel and peacekeeping operations in 2008 are estimated at just over 1.7 million tonnes of CO2 equivalents. When excluding peacekeeping operations, the emissions are approximately 770,000 tonnes of CO2 equivalents. Air travel is responsible for roughly half of the emissions produced.
The report lists each institution’s experiences, emissions reduction efforts and next steps towards climate neutrality. Several UN system organizations are committed to substantial emissions reductions and are implementing measures to reduce emissions from their facilities and travel. Five UN system organizations have declared themselves climate-neutral or carbon-neutral. Another six organizations have made specific high-profile events or meetings entirely or partially climate neutral. The UN system has announced its next step as scaling up to sustainable management systems in the UN, which will address, in a holistic and systematic manner, the full range of sustainability issues. From 2010 onwards, the UN’s EMG will coordinate the move from a greenhouse gas inventory and collection of success stories towards a common approach on emission reductions, throughout the United Nations system and emission reduction strategies with targets for each UN institution. For more information, please visit www.unep.org |
The report, launched during the UN climate convention meeting in Copenhagen, is entitled “Moving Towards a Climate Neutral UN: The UN system’s footprint and efforts to reduce it”.
It includes greenhouse gas inventory data from UN headquarters and major centres, down to its peacekeeping and field office operations. It covers the full range of the institutions that make up the UN system, from the Secretariat and its regional economic commissions, to the specialized agencies, funds and programmes.
