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The XV World Forestry Congress sought to define the role of forests in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and other major agreements, including the Global Forest Goals, the Paris Agreement on climate change, and the post-2020 global biodiversity framework

The launching event of the International Year of Sustainable Mountain Development, 2022, aimed to raise awareness of the importance of mountains for sustainable development. Speakers drew attention to the ecosystem services that mountain ecosystems provide and the challenges mountain communities face, including in the context of climate change.

Despite its frequent use as the main measure of progress, GDP fails to account for health, happiness, inequality, and environmental sustainability. An expert panel explored how a focus on wealth could inform policymaking in Africa—and how to make the shift.

The Water Action Decade 2018-2028 is now at its mid-point, and the Asia-Pacific region is gearing up to review progress and chart a roadmap for the next five years of the Decade.

During the two-day meeting, participants discussed the Sustainable Development Goal 6 Global Acceleration Framework, linkages between climate and water, planning for the UN 2023 Water Conference, and planning for the SDG 6 Synthesis Report 2023, among other agenda items.

Meeting face-to-face for the first time since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, parties tackled key issues to address prior to the face-to-face segment of the 15th meeting of the Conference of the Parties in June 2022. Issues discussed included plastic waste, electronic waste, waste lead-acid batteries, and mercury waste.

Parties adopted 12 decisions, including on artisanal and small-scale mining, phasing out products containing mercury, waste containing mercury, and the effectiveness evaluation of the Convention, that have set the course of implementation of the Minamata Convention in the years to come.

With greenhouse gas emissions at their highest ever and rising, delegates and authors worked overtime to finalize the Summary for Policymakers, which presents the key findings of their report, “Climate Change 2022: Mitigation of Climate Change.”

In a year when the Ocean features prominently in global environmental negotiations, attendees were urged to view the status quo as "the enemy."