Achim Steiner

• August 31, 2020

For nearly two years, an international group of 17 specialists on the finance frontier have been connecting digital technologies to new sources of money for the faltering Sustainable Development Goals. On Aug. 26, they unveiled an ambitious report on what can be done when traditional pools of capital are broadened and deepened by including …

Covid-19, Development, SDGs

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Reform Clouds Darken the Future of the UN Development Program

Barbara Crossette

• January 28, 2019

As the first effects of Secretary-General António Guterres’s ambitious organizational reform plans become apparent, former and current officials of the United Nations Development Program see the future of the internationally influential agency as uncertain if not in peril. Fears center on aspects of the reform plan for development that would allow more political interference …

Development, Health and Population, SDGs

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WORLDVIEWS

Germany Gets What’s Fair: Some Top UN Jobs

Helmut Volger

• June 8, 2017

BERLIN — It is a widely held view in political circles here that Germany has not been adequately represented in the United Nations, apart from its relatively frequent elected membership to the Security Council, which Germany has held five times and which last year announced its candidacy for a sixth term for 2019-2020. To be …

UN Agencies, WORLDVIEWS

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The UN Environment Program, Influential but Lacking Power

Helmut Volger

• February 5, 2015

BERLIN — The history of the United Nations Environment Program is illustrative in two respects: it reflects the changing importance of environmental issues within the UN system and it demonstrates that dedicated people in a UN organization can master the difficult task of implementing an ambitious mandate without sufficient political status, funds and personnel …

WORLDVIEWS

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The Growing Threat of Plastic in Marine Litter

Jacob S. Glass

• July 7, 2014

Two summers ago, Bill Grafton, the president emeritus of the Algalita Marine Research Foundation, and commercial fishermen lifted a 5,000-pound net ball from coastal waters off Provincetown, Massachusetts. The knot of plastic and rope was so heavy that his crew enlisted a construction loader for help. At the time, Grafton was coordinating a derelict-fishing-gear …