Global Issues
Thousands Gather in Nairobi as Science Meets Diplomacy for Planet Protection
NAIROBI, December 9 (IPS) - “There will never be a better time than now to invest in a stable climate, thriving ecosystems, and resilient lands, or in sustainable development that delivers for all,” said Amina J. Mohammed, the deputy Secretary-General of the United Nations, during the opening plenary of the seventh meeting of the UN Environment Assembly (UNEA-7) taking place from December 8 to 12, 2025.
“Coming so soon after the conclusion of COP30, we must carry forward the momentum generated in Belém, demonstrating that when countries, civil society and youth come together, real progress is possible, from protecting forests to increasing climate finance to advancing the rights of Indigenous peoples and women.”
UNEA is the primary global forum for setting the agenda and making critical choices about the Planet’s health. Delegates heard that insufficient ambition has set the world on track to overshoot the 1.5°C red line set in the Paris Agreement to limit the Earth’s temperature and avoid the worst climate impacts. The overshoot will happen within the next decade and steer the world towards 2.3-2.5°C warming by century’s end.
Against this backdrop, Abdullah Bin Ali Al-Amri, President of UNEA and President of the Environment Authority of Oman, said, “This week, we are called upon to make decisions that will define our joint trajectory for the year ahead.”
But the current trajectory is more concerning and less promising.
Mohammed, who also chairs the UN’s Sustainable Development Group, said despite some notable progress, efforts to achieve the UN’s SDGs are significantly off track, with dangerous consequences, as “20 to 40 percent of the world’s land has been degraded, affecting over 3 billion people.”
“One million species are at risk of extinction. And 9 million people a year die prematurely due to pollution.”
She was speaking to nearly 6,000 participants from 170 Member States, including 79 ministers and 35 deputy ministers gathered at the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) headquarters in Nairobi, Kenya. The meeting’s theme is Advancing Sustainable Solutions for a Resilient Planet.
UNEA is the top global body for environmental decisions, bringing together all 193 UN Member States.
As the world’s highest-level environmental decision-making body, it unites all UN members to set global environmental policies and catalyze action against the triple planetary crisis of climate change, pollution, and biodiversity loss. Importantly, it seeks to forge multilateralism or cooperation among many nations, backed by scientific evidence.
Inger Andersen, the executive director of UNEP, called on the assembly to consider the world at this unsettled time.
“This Assembly must delve deeply, given the world’s turbulent geopolitical waters, which intensify stress and strain on multilateral processes.”
Ali Al-Amri said UNEA was created to be the “conscience of the global environment.”
Overall, sessions dwelled on many diverse but interconnected issues, from driving compliance and enforcement against illegal traffic; protection of the High Seas and transboundary water cooperation; and rapid global reductions of deadly methane emissions to artificial intelligence.
Delegates heard about a new AI-driven tool developed by researchers at UC Berkeley in partnership with the UN that will help countries slash climate emissions by as much as 5 percent by 2040. Kigali Sim is an interactive, open-source tool that can also explore different policy interventions.
It simulates substances and equipment related to the Montreal Protocol (an international treaty to protect the earth’s ozone layer) and the Kigali Amendment, which amends the Montreal Protocol to combat climate change by reducing hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), potent greenhouse emissions that significantly worsen climate change.
HFCs are widely used in air conditioners, refrigerators, aerosols, and foam. Kigali Sim was built to support researchers and policymakers like those working on Kigali Implementation Plans. It is offered as a free, open-source project that prioritizes agency and privacy.
This software provides an easy-to-use interface where you can enter country-level modeling data and policies under consideration to quickly simulate potential impacts on emissions, energy, substance consumption, and equipment across multiple scenarios. It can also be used to explore various substances, such as HFCs, and sectors, including commercial refrigeration.
Global carbon markets featured prominently in the Assembly. These are trading systems where participants buy and sell carbon credits, which represent a reduction or removal of greenhouse gases from the atmosphere. They are a tool to help achieve climate targets cost-effectively by putting a price on carbon emissions.
They can be compliance markets, where trading is a mandatory response to government-set limits, or voluntary markets, where companies and organizations voluntarily offset their emissions.
A session dubbed “High-Integrity Carbon Markets: Impact and Path to Accelerated Climate Action” brought together delegates, private sector partners, civil society representatives, and technical experts to discuss the latest developments in market integrity and pathways for scaling global carbon markets.
Earlier, Ali Al-Amri stressed that success throughout the week would depend not only on the outcomes adopted but also on how they are reached, pointing out the value of trust, transparency, the spirit of compromise, and inclusiveness and promising that every voice will be heard.
Martha Korere, from an Indigenous community in Kenya’s Rift Valley region, told IPS that while the representation of Indigenous people and communities at UNEA-7 is satisfactory, “the assembly must accelerate the momentum around their rights, and specifically land rights that started at COP30.”
She called for transparency and integrity where carbon markets intersect with Indigenous people.
Overall, she was also pleased with the representation of young people. UNEA-7 was preceded by the Youth Environment Assembly, which saw more than 1,000 youth delegates from across the world come together to agree and issue the Global Youth Declaration, which put forward youth priorities for UNEA.
In all, urgent action and cooperation are the connecting threads across all sessions in light of multiple, complex challenges. Expert representations that included insights from farmers, followed by discussions with the audience, explored responses to issues such as invasive species, encouraging the collaboration of a wider audience of stakeholders from science, governments, NGOs, universities, farmers, and conservationists.
Central to these discussions were the increasing and accelerating negative impacts and threats of invasive species and biological pollution on marine, terrestrial, and freshwater ecosystems around the world, resulting in biodiversity loss, famine, pestilence, and pandemics in human, plant, animal, and microbial populations.
In the corridors of the Environmental Assembly, Newton Omunga from the Civil Society told IPS that they sought to bring these issues to the attention of UN systems and platforms for international discussion, cooperation, resolution, and coordinated action.
Since 2014, UNEA has held six sessions, during which 105 resolutions have spurred action on critically important issues, including air pollution, biodiversity, health, financing for development, plastic pollution, and climate change.
IPS UN Bureau Report
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