UN Under-Secretary-General for Economic and Social Affairs Wu Hongbo, in an editorial in the ‘Huffington Post,’ has outlined next steps following on the outcome of the UN Conference on Sustainable Development (UNCSD, or Rio+20), which concluded a year earlier in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
The UN has launched the fourth edition of Moving Towards a Climate Neutral UN, the annual progress report on the UN’s journey towards climate neutrality, which details the UN’s greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in 2011 and some of the activities undertaken in 2012 to reduce them.
The reports highlight that improving energy efficiency in operations, products and services, and the increased use of renewable energy are key priority action areas for business to support the UN Secretary-General’s Sustainable Energy for All (SE4ALL) initiative, while they also emphasize that industry-wide standards should be developed as well as new financing mechanisms to overcome risks associated with the suggested action areas.