World Environment Day 2014

As people around the globe today commemorate World Environment Day, which focuses this year on Small Island Developing States (SIDS) and their particular vulnerability to the effects of climate change, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) is renewing its call for a fresh approach to environmental protection, one which recognizes the intricate and deep connection between protecting the environment and human development.

Against this backdrop, UNDP is working to move away from a climate change discourse focused on trade-offs between economic growth, poverty and environment, to one that looks at how to advance these three strands of sustainable development together. To this end UNDP is working with countries to put in place climate change risk management systems, including adaptation and mitigation measures that contribute to their development agenda.

“Environmental protection is sometimes seen as an obstacle to economic growth,” says Magdy Martínez-Solimán, Deputy Assistant Administrator of UNDP’s Bureau for Development Policy. “But economic growth that strips out the planet’s ecosystems is not sustainable. Advancing human development and protecting the planet’s ecosystems must be approached as two sides of the same coin.”

UNDP is supporting a wide range of projects in these vulnerable nations that seek to achieve the “triple win” of sustainable growth, poverty alleviation and environmental protection.

This page features stories of some of this work in Small Island Developing States as well as other regions and habitats around the world.