A solar device turning waste heat into electricity in rural China and an Ugandan business manufacturing stationery from agricultural waste are among the dozens of winners of a United Nations-backed sustainable development award, it was announced today. The Supporting Entrepreneurs for Environment and Development (SEED) Award recognizes promising new locally-driven enterprises that work to improve livelihoods, tackle poverty and manage the sustainable development of natural resources in developing countries. The SEED initiative...

A United Nations-backed intervention involving cook stoves holds the promise of saving lives, uplifting health, improving regional environments, reducing deforestation, empowering local entrepreneurs, speeding development, and helping to stem global climate change. The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) has joined international efforts to dramatically boost the efficiency of some 3 billion cook stoves across Africa, Asia and Latin America, with the aim to protect women’s health and provide significant environmental...

International efforts to protect the ozone layer shielding life on Earth from harmful levels of ultraviolet rays have stopped additional ozone losses, potentially averting scores of millions of cases of skin cancer and eye cataracts, according to a new United Nations report released today. At the same time they have helped to mitigate the global warming greenhouse effect. “Today’s report underlines that action to protect the ozone layer has not only...

Amidst predictions by FAO of a record world cereal production of 2279.5 million tonnes during 2010-2011, the bad news is that drought conditions may bring down Russia's domestic wheat production to 50 million tonnes in the current year from 63.7 million tonnes in 2008-09. Russia has already imposed a temporary ban on wheat exports. This has pushed up international prices of wheat contradicting the prediction of FAO's Food Outlook 2010...

An annual assessment report released today by the United Nations shows that while significant declines have been recorded by many countries in reducing maternal and child mortality, greater progress must be made to meet the global targets contained in the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). First agreed at the UN Millennium Summit in September 2000, the eight MDGs set worldwide objectives for reducing extreme poverty and hunger, improving health and education,...