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...

Intensifying investments in clean energy can accelerate the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), the eight globally-agreed targets to slash poverty by 2015, the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) says in a new publication. A “green economy” is one that “not only improves human well-being and lessens inequality but also reduces environmental risks and ecological scarcities,” the brief says, underscoring its importance in realizing the MDGs. In 2008 amidst the...

Fewer children are dying before they reach their fifth birthdays, with the total number of under-five deaths falling by one third in the past two decades, according to fresh estimates by the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF). Between 1990 and 2009, the number of children below the age of five who died annually fell from 12.4 million to 8.1 million. The global under-five mortality rate dipped from 89 deaths per...

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...

A seven-state survey on rural internet awareness revealed that close to 84% were ignorant of the medium’s existence. Of the ones who did know about it, 85% used the net only to access emails, 13% to know about the latest farming techniques and 8% to look up fertilisers, among other uses. We can acknowledge that internet penetration so far has been weak; but the past is not a guide to...