Category: Climate Change

Mr. Guterres visited a project that is helping the Caribbean nation to combat the effects of coastal erosion and rising seas – among the impacts of global warming.

While commending the initiative, known as the Georgetown Sea Defense, he underlined the need for greater solidarity and financial support.

UN Photo/Lucanus Ollivierre

Efforts to tackle erosion and sea-level rise are underway in St. Vincent and the Grenadines where a new coastal sea defense project is being constructed in the Sandy Bay community.

Climate justice

“We must have stronger support from the international community – what we call climate justice – which means adequate financing at low cost, quickly decided, in order to allow for all these works that we have been seeing to protect the island against the sea, and against the floods and storms,” he said.

Responding to a journalist’s question, Mr. Guterres said that SIDS must have quick and easy access to climate finance through the Loss and Damage Fund.

The long-awaited mechanism to help vulnerable countries offset the damage from droughts, floods and other extreme weather caused by climate change, finally became operational at the UN COP28 climate conference in Dubai last year.

Mr. Guterres explained that under the fund, small projects like the one he visited would not require the same level of bureaucracy as those costing billions.

They instead call for “quick decisions and quick operationalization of the money available, and much more funding,” he said.

“The people of the Small Island Developing States are on the frontlines of climate change. They did not contribute to global warming, but they are paying the price,” he added.

UN Photo/Lucanus Ollivierre

Prefabricated homes built in Orange Hill resettlement area, in northeast Saint Vincent, to house some people who lived in areas declared unsuitable for habitation after the eruptions of the La Soufriere volcano in 2021.

Rising from the ashes

The Secretary-General also surveyed areas of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines that were affected by the April 2021 eruption of the La Soufrière volcano.

Some 20,000 people, roughly a fifth of the population, had to evacuate immediately. New houses were built in the resettlement area for those whose homes were destroyed.

The UN chief was in the country to attend the summit of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC), held on Friday.

He arrived in the capital, Kingstown, the previous day, where, during a press conference, he paid tribute to the courage, resilience and solidarity of the people in the aftermath of the volcano. 

With more than 7,000 delegates from 182 UN Member States and more than 170 ministers participating in Nairobi, UNEA-6 adopted a package of action plans, from promoting sustainable lifestyles to the sound management of chemicals and waste and sand and dust storms, issuing calls for immediate steps to rein in overconsumption and take smarter, greener steps towards sustainability.

“The world needs action, speed and real, lasting change”, said Inger Anderson, Executive Director of the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) at the closing session on Friday.

A ministerial declaration affirmed the international community’s strong intent to slow climate change, restore nature and land and create a pollution-free world, she said.

She added that true multilateralism was prevailing with wide engagement from civil society, indigenous peoples, international organisations, scientists and the private sector.

“UNEA-6 has delivered an extra boost to help us deliver this change and to ensure every person on this planet enjoys the right to a safe and healthy environment,” she said.

Hope amid triple planetary crisis

At a time when the world faces a triple planetary crisis of pollution, biodiversity loss and climate change, action must be swift and concerted, said UN Deputy Secretary-General Amina Mohammed.

She said the robust UNEA-6 discussions and outcome will accelerate the world’s common goals, including efforts to achieve both the African Union’s Agenda 2063 and the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and its 17 Goals.

“We cannot afford to deplete nature’s resources without facing serious consequences,” the Deputy UN chief said in a video message. “The decisions we make today will shape our destiny tomorrow.”

UN News/Natalia Jidovanu

The virtual reality experience Vanishing Treasures aims to convey the impact of climate change on snow leopards, Bengal tigers and mountain gorillas.

Environmental decision makers

Known as the “world parliament on the environment”, UNEA-6 became the  highest decision-making body in the field at its inception in 2012. The goal is simple: to help restore the harmony between people and the nature. Read our explainer here.

During the five-day conference, UNEA-6 saw delegates debate everything from the use of artificial intelligence to solar engineering techniques.

Among the adopted resolutions, one provided guidance on how the world can do better on protecting the environment during and after conflicts, and another addressed how best to combat desertification.

UNEP/Natalia Mroz

Rappers Frida Amani and Dex McBean perform their track Get with the Programme/Twende na Mpangoon on Multilateral Environmental Agreements Day at UNEA-6.

New day, new approach, new reports

Dozens of side events considered fresh initiatives and possible breakthroughs, including the use of artificial intelligence to fight climate change.

In the so-called fast fashion field, a UNEP and UN Alliance for Sustainable Fashion exhibit featured stylish clothing showcasing a project aimed at stopping overproduction and overconsumption, eliminating hazardous chemical byproducts and scaling circular business models which benefit the environment.

The UNEA-6 also hosted the first Multilateral Environmental Agreements Day, marked on 28 February.

Bridging the divide

Rich countries use six times more resources and generate 10 times the climate impacts than low-income nations, according to a UNEP report launched on Friday at UNEA-6.

The 2024 Global Resource Outlook contains a wide range of evidence-based findings and calls for sweeping policy changes to close the divide between rich and poor at all levels, while growing the economy, improving wellbeing and minimizing environmental impacts.

“The triple planetary crisis of climate change, nature loss and pollution is driven from a crisis of unsustainable consumption and production. We must work with nature, instead of merely exploiting it,” said UNEP chief Ms. Andersen ahead of the launch.

Plundering the Earth

Indeed, the report showed that natural resource extraction is expected to rise by 60 per cent by 2060 and could derail efforts to achieve not only global climate, biodiversity, and pollution targets, but also economic prosperity and human wellbeing.

“Reducing the resource intensity of mobility, housing, food and energy systems is the only way we can achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and ultimately a just and liveable planet for all,” she said.

The outcome of UNEA-6 will feed into other like-minded collaborative global efforts towards sustainability, including the Summit of the Future, to be held at UN Headquarters in September.

United Nations

SDG 13

SDG 13: COMBAT CLIMATE CHANGE

 

• Strengthen resilience and adaptation to climate-related hazards and natural disasters
• Integrate climate change measures into national policies, strategies and planning
• Improve education, awareness-raising and human and institutional capacity on climate change mitigation, adaption, impact reduction and early warning
• Raise capacity for effective climate change-related planning and management in least developed countries

 

The UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) is the primary international, intergovernmental forum for negotiating the global response to climate change.

UN News’s Daniel Dickinson travelled to Madagascar ahead of the United Nations Environment Assembly, which is taking place in Nairobi, Kenya, from 26 February, to ask people how they are coping.

Life is becoming increasingly challenging in the village of Zanavo Fagnalenga on the southernmost tip of Madagascar. Years of under-development, a series of humanitarian crises and the impact of climate change has pushed this village of several hundred people into poverty and has made it almost uninhabitable at times.

Small wood and grass triangular-shaped dwellings dot the dusty and arid landscape. A few villagers sell peanuts piled up in small rusty cans, and manioc are arranged in rows and available to anyone who can afford them.

The small amount of water that is available is dedicated to human consumption and to keeping a few crops alive on the margins of the settlement.

UN News/Daniel Dickinson

People in southern Madagascar are learning to adapt to climate change.

Climate change intensifies weather’s impact

For as long as people can remember, fishing and farming have been the main activities here, and people have been able to cope with the vicissitudes of the weather, including the seasonal wind which builds in intensity from the beginning of March every year.

It blows in from the Indian Ocean and whips up the red sandy soil along this once fertile coastline. It is called the Tiomena, which translates from the Malagasy language as red wind.

Jean Christian Lahanbitoly, a fisher and community leader, says the Tiomena has had a significant impact on life in coastal communities.

“The Tiomena carries the sand on the hills along the coast and drives it inland towards our village. When it is strong, it is almost impossible to work outside. When we don’t work, it means we have no money to buy food or water, so we suffer a lot.”

UN News/Daniel Dickinson

Jean Christian Lahanbitoly is a fisher and community leader.

The Tiomena is not a new challenge to this and other communities in the rural communes of Maroalopoty and Maroalomainty, but its intensity has increased due to climate change.

Deforestation over many decades has left many hillsides bare and open to ravages of the strong winds, which have led to increased erosion of the sandy soils these communities are built on. And as sands creep over the land of these predominantly farming people, the ability to cultivate crops is decreasing.

But, the village is blighted by another aspect of climate change – the lack of water.

“It is very difficult for farmers to grow any crops as the Tiomena is bringing sand that is invading our land and village,” Mr. Lahanbitoly said. “It’s becoming even harder now, as we also don’t get enough rain.”

Madagascar is the fourth most climate change-affected country in the world according to the UN, and across southern Madagascar, farmers are struggling to harvest parched crops, especially maize which is traditionally grown but which requires a lot of water.

Some people have started leaving villages like Zanavo Fagnalenga and migrating north in the search of less challenging growing conditions “where the land is better and life is easier”, Mr. Lahanbitoly said. For many, it is the only way to avoid going hungry.

UN News/Daniel Dickinson

A woman sells produce in the village of Zanavo Fagnalenga.

‘I am an optimist’

“I am an optimist,” he added, “but, the pessimistic view is that if things don’t improve, we will all die of hunger.”

Mr. Lahanbitoly is right to feel optimistic following the launch of a project which is aimed at protecting the vulnerable coastal habitat and enabling communities to earn their livelihoods.

The focus is the humble sisal plant, which is resistant to harsh conditions and well adapted to more a more arid environment. 

When cultivated in grids, the plant can help to secure the topsoil and prevent further erosion. In Maroalopoty and Maroalomainty, this means fewer sandstorms and more opportunities to work the land.

The stiff fibre it produces can also be exploited commercially and processed into rope and even clothes.

“For so long we have not been able to cultivate this land because of the sand,” said local farmer Lydia Monique Anjarasoa, “but we have planted sisal plants, which have helped the community.”

The planting of sisal, along with cactus and ipomoea, a type of vine, which provides more stability and water-retention qualities to the soil, has been supported by the UN Development Programme (UNDP) and the government.

Individuals were paid to plant the crop, providing much needed income they were able to spend in their communities, thereby boosting local economies.

UN News/Daniel Dickinson

UNDP’s Fabrice Mamitiana.

One plant has changed the landscape

“The people living here are very vulnerable and have become poorer as harvests have decreased,” said UNDP’s Fabrice Mamitiana. “The community is happy because we created employment, and they saw that the sands stopped advancing because of the sisal they planted. This allowed them to continue growing on the remaining agricultural land and with the little amount of rain that came, they were able to have a small harvest.”

Now, farmers and their families are growing, eating and selling beans, millet and sorghum amongst other crops. They are now more resilient to the increasingly harsh environment and are recognizing for the first time in some years that they have a productive and sustainable future on their land.

However, there is little they can do to change the inconsistent rainfall. “Where there is no rainfall, there is no production and this has led to the decapitalization of the people in this region and has pushed them towards hunger,” said the Governor of Androy region, Soja Lahimaro.

“There are emergency solutions,” he explained, “but these are just temporary, so we are working together with the UN and government on a longer-term development plan.”

There are plans, if funds are available, to extend the planting of sisal to other communities in the south to reinforce their resilience to the changing climate and to put them on the path to sustainable development.

United Nations

SDG 15

SDG 15: SUSTAINABLY USE ECOSYSTEMS

 

• Combat desertification and restore degraded land and soil
• Ensure conservation of mountain ecosystems to enhance their capacity to provide benefits essential for sustainable development
• Promote fair, equitable sharing of and access to benefits related to genetic resources use
• End poaching and trafficking of protected species and address demand and supply of illegal wildlife products
• Mobilize and increase financial resources to conserve and sustainably use biodiversity and ecosystems and to fund sustainable forest management

 

Escalating forest losses, land degradation, and species extinction pose severe threats to the planet and people

Set up as a sort of ‘world parliament on the environment’, UNEA aims to define priorities for environmental policies and develop international legislation on the matter.

Why is UNEA important?

The 2024 Environment Assembly, or UNEA-6, is expected to host a record 6,000 delegates, including seven Heads of State and 139 Ministers and Vice-Ministers, as well as experts, activists, and industry representatives.

UNEA was created in 2012, as an outcome of the UN Conference on Sustainable Development (Rio+20), held in Brazil. Since its establishment, the Assembly has ushered in a new era of multilateralism with environmental issues given the same level of importance as such global concerns as peace and security, and health.

Over the years, UNEA has approved important resolutions on topics such as combating illegal wildlife trafficking, protecting the environment in areas of armed conflict, sustainable urban mobility, among others. 

Due to the discussions at the Environment Assembly’s 2022 session, negotiations have begun on the first legally binding international instrument to end plastic pollution, which is expected to be completed by the end of 2024.

What’s at stake for UNEA-6?

The central theme of UNEA-6 will be multilateral environmental agreements and how they can help overcome the triple planetary crisis of climate chaos, biodiversity loss and pollution.

Despite the socio-economic uncertainties that arose in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic and the current growing geopolitical tensions, the last two years have been marked by very important victories for environmental cooperation.

For instance, in 2022, the UN General Assembly recognized the universal human right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment, opening space for constitutional and legal changes at the country levels in favor of the environment and humanity.

That same year, the historic Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework was approved, with measures to protect 1 million species of animals and plants that are on the verge of extinction.

In June 2023, the 193 UN Member countries signed the so-called High Seas Treaty, to conserve marine biodiversity in areas beyond national jurisdictions.

Last November, a long-awaited agreement on ‘loss and damage’ financing for vulnerable countries hard-hit by climate change was announced at the UN climate conference, COP28.

UNEA-6 has set aside a day during its session that will be dedicated to discussion of these and other successes, and consideration of how governments can take broad and unified actions, including adequate financing, to implement the multilateral agreements they have signed.

At the same time, UNEA-6 will not just focus on new commitments, but on fulfilling all those that already exist.

UNEP

What are the priority topics?

Inger Andersen, Executive Director of the UN Environment Programme (UNEP), has highlighted the six priority areas for UNEA-6: Water scarcity; responsible mining; mineral management, especially phosphorus; climate-altering technologies; financing environmental actions; and implementation of the Kunming-Montreal framework.

According to Ms. Andersen, “All we need to do is get together and deliver on these global solutions that we have promised to each other so that we can secure the future for all of humanity, living on a healthy and thriving planet.”

Negotiations ahead of and during the event are focused on the proposed resolutions presented by Member States and the ministerial declaration that will be adopted at the conclusion of the Assembly. The resolutions aim to identify and prioritize common challenges and possible solutions. They also define priority areas of work for UNEP. 

At UNEA-6, 20 resolutions and 2 decisions will be debated, covering topics such as solar radiation modification, mining, desertification, circularity of the sugar cane agroindustry, highly dangerous pesticides, increasing the resilience of ecosystems and communities to drought, regional cooperation for air quality, among others.

© Ocean Image Bank/Naja Bertolt

What’s up with the negotiations?

In the Environment Assembly, resolutions are expected to be approved by consensus. In practice, this means that every member present has the right to veto a decision. Therefore, the week leading up to the conference is essential for delegations to review draft texts and avoid or overcome impasses. Negotiations often extend into the week of the conference, with closed-door sessions that can go on late into the night.

As the world’s highest decision-making body on the environment, UNEA aims to help restore harmony between humanity and nature, improving the lives of the world’s most vulnerable people.

UNEP will purchase certified carbon credits to offset travel emissions from funded participants as part of its annual environmental inventory process to offset greenhouse gas emissions, as well as several other measures to reduce the environmental impact of the conference. 

People living in Madagascar are learning to adapt to rapidly altering climatic conditions in what is said to be the fourth most climate change affected country worldwide; that’s according to the UN Resident Coordinator, the most senior UN official in the Indian Ocean island nation.

As Issa Sanogo nears the end of his posting in the capital Antananarivo, he sat down with UN News to reflect on the progress the country and its citizens have made in responding to the climate crisis.

UN Madagascar/Zoe Rasoaniaina

UN Resident Coordinator, Issa Sanogo, visits a field in Amboasary Madagascar, where peanuts are thriving due to new irrigation measures.

“Recently, I met a woman farmer in the small town of Betroka, in Anosy region one of the areas in southern Madagascar which has been facing a humanitarian emergency due to drought. 

It’s a challenging place in which to live at the best of times having suffered from years of underdevelopment and insecurity.

She had attended a farming school supported by the World Food Programme (WFP) and AMC, a local NGO, after which she told me how she is committed to trying new ways to grow the staple crop, cassava. She is using a compost basket which has had an incredible and immediate impact. 

The increasingly dry and harsh conditions have meant that until recently each plant had only produced about four kilogrammes of the root crop. But now, with the changes she has made, her 100 or so plants are producing 20kg each, which is two tonnes, a surprising harvest on such arid land.

New opportunities

Her family has access to more nutritious food and she is able to sell what she has left over to pay for children’s education and the family’s health care needs.

This is just one example of how Malagasy people are adapting to the new reality of climate change, but there are many others.

UN News/Daniel Dickinson

The availability of electricity, as part of the Rapid Rural Transformation initiative, is leading to more entrepreneurial opportunities like barber shops.

In Behara and Ifotaka communities, to the south of Anosy region, like elsewhere access to water is a critical issue and a key programmatic entry point for what the UN is calling a Convergence Zones approach, which brings UN agencies together to leverage their expertise and improve outcomes. 

The UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) has introduced climate-smart practices to promote drought-resistant seeds such as sorghum and peanut and Californian drop-by-drop irrigation systems using solar pumps.

In Ifotaka the Rapid Rural Transformation project introduced by WFP provides the community with a solar-powered hub supplying electricity and digital access to the community school and other social structures. 

In addition, it is providing entrepreneurial opportunities and creating employment for the youth, with support from the UN’s International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD). 

UNICEF supports access to water by building solar-powered water pumps and water kiosks, providing potable water for daily use, and reducing incidence of diarrhoea and other waterborne diseases, and malnutrition. 

Climate vulnerability

Madagascar is the fourth most vulnerable country in the world to climate change. It is recurrently hit by droughts and cyclones that are increasing in frequency, duration and intensity due to climate change. These effects mainly impact the south and south-east of the country.

When I arrived in Madagascar in late 2020, the country was facing its most serious drought in 40 years. Widespread hunger – called kere – was pushing communities into near famine-like conditions. 

UN News/Daniel Dickinson

Accessing water to grow crops is a constant concern for many farmers in southern Madagascar.

During my recent field visits to the south, I noticed how arid the land is despite the beneficial effect of extra rain due to cyclones in 2023.

Households are very dependent on rain-fed agriculture, making them more vulnerable to these increasingly unstable weather conditions.

With drought, crops not only suffer from a lack of water but are also affected by the red sandstorms that destroy the plants and blow away the fertile topsoil. In these conditions, communities struggle to grow key staples and their food insecurity and malnutrition increase, with women often carrying most of the burden. 

Building resilience

However, I firmly believe that preventing future crises and accelerating recovery from the effects of repetitive climate shocks requires more than emergency assistance. 

Building the resilience of individuals, communities, and institutions to the effects of droughts and cyclones, including through climate change adaptation, is the only sustainable solution. 

A good and simple example is the cash-for-work programme implemented by the UN Development Programme (UNDP), through which community members obtained an income for planting sisal along the coast. 

The sisal helps to lessen the wind’s damaging impact on crops and retains soil moisture, stabilizing coastal sand dunes and providing protection for crops normally affected by the red sandstorms. As a result, communities are now able to grow cash crops in fields which were once lost to the sand.

UN News/Daniel Dickinson

El Nino is bringing drier conditions and stronger winds across southern Madagascar.

UN collaboration

The UN is now working through a more integrated approach to bring more sustainable solutions to mitigate and prevent hunger and the poverty in the south. 

Over the last three years, we have focused on building resilience to ease the worst effects of future droughts and reduce humanitarian needs in the long term. 

As a result of these integrated interventions, we have started to see an improvement in the daily life of the local communities. The next step is to scale up this work across the south.

We aim to move collectively, beyond short-term supply-driven response efforts, to demand-driven results that can reduce people’s risks, needs, and vulnerabilities

The Malagasy Government, along with the UN and technical and financial partners, have recognized the importance of refocusing on the people at the heart of the recurrent crises in these regions.

We aim to move collectively, beyond short-term supply-driven response efforts, to demand-driven results that can reduce people’s risks, needs, and vulnerabilities.

El Niño

However, the situation remains fragile and the current El Niño phenomenon creates significant risk of renewed deterioration of the situation. 

To support 2.3 million people in need of assistance, we recently revised our Flash Appeal to consider its potential impact.

About $39 million out of $162 million that has been requested is for anticipatory actions.

Madagascar has been selected as one of the 30 countries in the UN Secretary-General’s Early Warnings for All Initiative. The country’s action plan for 2024–2027 was the first to be completed globally and was launched in Dubai during COP28 in December 2023. 

This brought significant visibility to Madagascar’s effort and helped sensitize partners to support our prevention work and the need for funding.

The plan aims to provide access to early warning systems to everyone in the country by 2027. This is an essential element for reducing humanitarian need and the cost of responses in the long term, and ultimately for progress towards the realization of the 2030 Agenda. 

Optimism

As I prepare to leave Madagascar, I remain optimistic that with the right support the most vulnerable communities will be able to realize their hopes for a better life for all people, one based on peace, security and prosperity.

The team is working with local authorities and civil society to find fresh solutions to the young nation’s environmental challenges, one reused plastic bottle at a time.

There is no supply issue.

“Every time it rains in Juba, say during a weekend of rain, you can see about 25,000 kg (approx. 55,000 lbs) of plastic waste mixed with silt that flows into the drains, and eventually into the Tomping camp,” says Ms. Gazdar, talking about one of the two UN bases in the capital city of Juba where some of the nearly 18,000 peacekeepers live.

“Finally, the plastic waste makes its way out of all these drains and into the Nile, which is this beautiful, long, pure river which is less and less pristine every day after the rain. So, we’re trying to set up systems where we can capture the waste before it actually reaches the Nile.”

Coping with climate shocks

Since South Sudan’s independence in 2011 following a historic referendum, it has faced many political, socioeconomic and environmental challenges. Despite its lush biodiversity, rivers teeming with life and a bounty of natural resources, it is among the five most climate-vulnerable countries in the world, according to the UN Environment Programme (UNEP).

In recent years, a devastating cycle of floods and droughts have disrupted agriculture, exacerbated food security and affected approximately one million people annually. Above-average rainfall has inundated its rivers and tributaries, submerging large swathes of land, including homes, farms and schools.

Political and economic uncertainty have taken a toll on the development of public services such as waste management and recycling, allowing waste to clog the country’s waterways and wetlands as it makes its way to the Nile River which South Sudan shares with 11 other African countries.

Over 200 million people rely on the Nile for their livelihoods, yet poor waste management can lead to chemical and plastic leakages that threaten ecosystem services, human health and economic prosperity.

United Nations

SDG 12

SDG 12: SUSTAINABLE PRODUCTION AND CONSUMPTION 

• Substantially reduce waste generation through prevention, reduction, recycling and reuse
• Achieve sustainable management and efficient use of natural resources
• Halve per capita global food waste at retail and consumer levels and encourage companies to adopt sustainable practices
• Support developing countries to strengthen their scientific and technological capacity to move towards more sustainable consumption and production patterns
• Implement policies to promote sustainable tourism that creates jobs and promotes local culture
• Phase out inefficient fossil fuel subsidies that encourage wasteful consumption

Every year, 4.8 to 12.7 million tonnes of plastic are dumped into our oceans.

‘Innovate, use what you have and identify solutions’

Ms. Gazdar and her team work with people in the community – local authorities and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) such as the Green Youth Empowerment as well as community members who are inspired to find creative solutions to South Sudan’s environmental challenges.

“Even in the direst situations you still have your creativity, so innovate, use what you have and identify solutions,” said Ms. Gazdar, who has teamed up with two young South Sudanese, Alice Sabuni and Andrew Ugalla, to build essential structures reusing one-gallon plastic bottles as bricks.

Mr. Ugalla, a teacher, tells his students to bring two plastic bottles a day to school instead of fees so they can also contribute to the construction project, said Ms. Gazdar. This way, his students learn the value of recycling and to be resourceful.

© Andrew Ugalla

A house in South Sudan built with plastic bottle bricks.

Giving plastic bottles a second life

“Considering that South Sudan does not currently have recycling facilities, we’re reusing these plastic bottles by filling them with soil and then using them for construction,” explained Ms. Gazdar.

Given their durability and resistance to degradation, plastics make robust bricks.

“The NGOs have constructed an amazing collection of structures. Schools have been built out of these upcycled plastic bottles as well as [for] ablutions, houses, water tanks and community centres.”

There is no shortage of plastic waste to reuse. Last year, at a clean-up event that UNMISS organized during World Environment Day, marked on 5 June, peacekeepers picked up 1,500 garbage bags worth of waste.

Inspired by umuganda, which means “coming together in common purpose” in Kinyarwanda – a monthly community clean-up campaign in Rwanda – UNMISS plans to organize more such events to bring people together to care for their environment.

© UNMISS/Isaac Billy

Climate scientist Shazneen Cyrus Gazdar (centre) and UN peacekeepers participate in a clean-up event in Juba, South Sudan, on World Environment Day in June 2023.

Reducing emissions, creating jobs

Reusing plastic also helps to fight climate change. Plastics are detrimental to the environment and life on the planet throughout their life cycle. They are mostly produced from fossil fuels and can generate nearly two billion metric tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions in a year, according to UNEP.

Ending single-use plastics by changing production and consumption patterns also helps to fight the climate crisis. Plastics are detrimental to the environment and life on the planet throughout their life-cycle. They are mostly produced from fossil fuels and could generate 2.1 gigatons of greenhouse gas emissions a year by 2040, according to UNEP.  

“You use one third less cement in these buildings and no traditional bricks, so you are mitigating a lot of greenhouse gases, and these buildings can withstand massive tropical storms and even small earthquakes,” said Ms. Gazdar.

Plastic brick buildings

Today, there are numerous buildings constructed with the plastic bricks in Juba. Besides providing shelter and protection, the construction of the buildings has also become a source of employment for local women and young people.

© Andrew Ugalla

Building essential structures in South Sudan with plastic bricks.

Next, Ms. Gazdar’s team is planning to build waste collection points to support Juba’s new City Waste Management Plant and a Women’s Centre for Excellence for the South Sudan Border Security Police through the Mission’s Quick Impact Project mechanism.

The centre will cater to women police officers, providing them with a stable and safe space to work. Currently, there are no toilets or private spaces for them to change into their uniforms.

“We are all coming together to make the centre,” she said. “The women police (officers) have given us their wish list of structures – offices, changing rooms, storage, toilets and training rooms. Our implementing partners, the NGOs, will basically construct the centre using upcycled plastic bottles and zero energy light bulbs.”

Find out more about how the world can end plastic pollution here.

Learn more about UN Peacekeeping Operations here.