Library

This guidance document explains the Protocol on Pollutant Release and Transfer Registers (PRTRs), which provides an incentive to reduce levels of pollution and promote cleaner systems of production and healthier communities and ecosystems. The Protocol will enable ordinary members of the public, simply by using the Internet, to find out about the major sources of polluting emissions in their immediate neighbourhoods. 

This guidance document presents the Aarhus Convention, which is a unique environmental treaty linking environmental rights with human rights.

This guidance document is intended as a convenient non-legally binding and user-friendly reference tool to assist policymakers, legislators and public authorities in their daily work of implementing the Convention and of realizing the provisions of Principle 10 in practice. The document draws on other international law instruments in the area of the environment and human rights.

This technical document sets baseline expectations for companies to provide proactive and constructive input to governments to advocate for the creation of effective climate policies. It connects the dots between sustainability commitments, such as emissions reductions across their value chains and efficiency improvements, with corporate policy positions.

This manual aims to support measuring or assessing forest governance. Forest governance comprises all the social and economic systems that affect how people interact with forests, including bureaucracies, laws, policies, traditional norms and culture, patterns of land tenure, and markets.

En Afrique, le changement climatique met clairement en péril la vie humaine et les moyens de subsistance. Les journalistes locaux ont des missions primordiales à accomplir. Pourtant, en Afrique, les médias peuvent et devraient en faire davantage pour parler du changement climatique. L’UNESCO a fait paraître cet ouvrage pour contribuer à remédier à cette lacune majeure.

This technical document aims at “demystifying” gender mainstreaming and providing practical guidance on how to systematically  address existing or potential gender inequalities specific to UNIDO’s energy and climate change interventions.

This technical document has for main objective to share relevant experiences in the refrigeration, air conditioning and foam sectors in which low-GWP technologies are employed, especially natural refrigerants and foam-blowing agents.

The knowledge of how the transition to a sustainable, low-carbon economy will affect employment, especially underlying job movements, is vital to informing policy, yet there are few comparable studies for developing countries. As part of the ILO’s Global Green Jobs Programme, this manual provides practical solutions to help fill these information gaps.

This policy brief outlines the financial mechanisms and instruments that could potentially be used to channel resources into countries’ climate change programs. It then offers lessons learned and policy recommendations given Latin America and the Caribbean countries’ experience with different versions of these mechanisms.

This manual is targeted to agricultural development professionals who need better information on the ways in which men and women adapt to and mitigate climate change and how best to address their needs when supporting the development of climate-resilient rural communities.

This is the second edition of the document.

This manual outlines the vulnerability of small island developping states (SIDS) in the Pacific and the Caribbean to natural hazards and climate risks, and explains how gender roles and responsibilities result in differential exposure and impact of disasters. Putting on a “gender lens” means analyzing what men and women do in their daily lives, looking at how they interact and what specific needs arise out of this. It is intended to provide national disaster management personnel working in the SIDS with a tool to strengthen their practice; it is not intended to be exhaustive and should be considered as an aid to complement pre-existing knowledge. The document aims to help practitioners identify and integrate gender into their decision-making and actions on the ground in every phase of disaster risk management.

This manual provides local policy-makers and major stakeholders with a methodology to plan for climate change. These plans must address both mitigation (e.g., reducing the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere) and adaptation (responding to the impacts of climate change). The publication stresses that, to be effective, local plans for climate change require the involvement of a variety of stakeholders and a specific focus on the most vulnerable groups. It also gives guidance so that any city can get started no matter how limited its resources. In particular, it describes “quick win” activities that address both climate and urban issues simultaneously.

This manual aims to inform and capacitate local government officials so as to assist them in initiating, developing and managing Clean Development Mechanism and Verified Emission Reduction projects within their cities, towns or regions. It highlights that key areas of local government competencies that city officials may want to target when implementing carbon trading projects include town and urban planning, infrastructure development, service provision, waste management, energy provisioning and transportation. Part A of this document provides an overview of the carbon market.  Part B describes the strategic decisions that need to be taken in order to identify and assess the potential of embarking on a carbon trading project. Part C outlines the specific steps to follow in developing a successful carbon trading project, once the initial conceptualisation has been completed.

This manual aims to provide mayors and municipal practitioners in developing countries with practical insights on climate change adaptation. In particular, it seeks to address climate change adaptation with an additional discussion of challenges facing informal settlements, the urban poor, and other vulnerable groups. It stresses that when considered in light of various challenges and ongoing activities, climate change can be an opportunity for positive change and action in cities, rather than a competing priority for scarce resources.

This manual provides an overview of the various approaches to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases across different areas of work and between different United Nations (UN) organizations. Not only does this publication offer a generic model on how to approach emissions reductions, it also provides an introduction to basic concepts, reduction options (e.g. finding alternatives to air travel, as it is found that in most UN organizations air travel generates the vast majority of greenhouse gas emissions) and advice on how to get started. The manual is of particular reference to UN staff and policy makers looking for an introduction to emissions reductions.

This manual provides operational guidance on how to manage the risk of floods in a transforming urban environment and changeable climate. It argues for a strategic approach, in which appropriate measures are identified, assessed, selected and integrated in a process that both involves and informs the full range of stakeholders. This integrated approach includes: the construction of drainage channels, incorporating “urban greening” such as wetlands and environmental buffers; the creation of flood warning systems; and improved land planning to counter the effects of potential flooding. The guidebook also advocates for a more cohesive information dissemination system involving web-based flood reports and accessibility to hydrological and hydro-meteorological data and for cooperation from various sectors of government, the public sector, civil society, and other organizations.

This manual consists of a media pack which aims to give journalists an overview of a key issue in global climate change negotiations. Reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation in developing countries (REDD) is a mechanism to slow the loss of forests, but how it is going to work in practice is the subject of debate. This document briefly explains how the REDD mechanism might work and raises some of the key controversies to be resolved. It is accompanied by a short film, which looks at the possible effects of REDD on forest communities and contains interviews with different stakeholders including environmental journalists on reporting the subject, and by a video news release on REDD, which includes interviews with forest communities, campaigners, economists and politicians.

This manual aims to translate available climate science and current international climate policies into the tools for practical action in Africa, in the context of sustainable development. In this regard the guidebook focuses on the potential climate change impacts on key sectors in Africa and appropriate adaptation and mitigation options. It outlines the governance, technological, financial and capacity building opportunities available to the continent to work effectively towards sustainable development. The manual is self-contained and stands alone, but provides guidance to intended users to other relevant materials in the form of links and annexes. The primary audiences for the guidebook are policymakers, decision makers, practitioners from public and private sector, civil society organizations, environment and climate change negotiators and experts

This manual is designed to provide guidance and assistance to World Meteorological Organization (WMO) Members in developing national activities linked to climate information and services. This third edition of the manual describes basic principles and modern practices important in the development and implementation of all climate services, and outlines methods of best practice in climatology. It is intended to describe concepts and considerations, and provides references to other technical guidance and information sources, rather than attempting to be all-inclusive in the guidance presented.