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Energy leaders discussed challenges and opportunities related to the energy transition and took stock of progress on the over 185 voluntary Energy Compact commitments that were announced during the UN High-level Dialogue on Energy.

Meeting at a crucial moment for the future of the Treaty, parties relaunched negotiations on measures to enhance the functioning of the Treaty’s Multilateral System of access and benefit-sharing. Parties further addressed farmers’ rights and issues related to “digital sequence information/genetic sequence data” (data derived from genetic resources that is often shared freely online) that could undermine the benefit-sharing regime.

The Chemical Review Committee faced a lengthy agenda as it reviewed a dozen hazardous chemicals and pesticides to determine if they should be listed under the Rotterdam Convention’s prior informed consent procedure, which could limit their trade, if deemed necessary to protect human health and the environment.

The UN Secretary-General said this year’s SDG Moment arrived at a moment of “great peril” for our world and encouraged leaders to avoid the temptation of leaving development priorities for a sunnier day. The 90-minute event highlighted a few SDGs as particularly critical to achieving the world's ambitions for a better future, such as climate action (SDG 13) and equality (SDGs 5 and 10).

Participants made progress on the outline for a future framework on chemicals and waste to guide global efforts for years to come, and agreed to reconvene in early 2023 for further deliberations to enable the framework’s adoption at the International Conference on Chemicals Management in September 2023.

Despite more progress at this two-week session than over the last decade, delegates were unable to reach consensus on a new high seas treaty addressing marine biodiversity in areas beyond national jurisdiction and, instead, suspended the session, to be resumed in early 2023.

As environmental concerns continue to grow, the prospect of extracting mineral resources from the deep seabed has generated quite a debate, which permeated the work of the Assembly.

Highlighting the synergies and gains to be made by tackling climate and sustainable development challenges in a coordinated manner, the conference also identified steps that countries can take in their national reporting to build support for action and counter the perception that climate mitigation is somehow too expensive.

The first in-person meeting in over two years replenished the Multilateral Fund and addressed questions of gaps in global monitoring of ozone depleting substances, specific usage and production of methyl bromide and carbon tetrachloride, and energy efficiency and phase-down of hydrofluorocarbons that contribute to climate change.