The UNEP Year Book is a series that highlight emerging environmental issues and significant events and development during the year. It also tracks environmental trends by presenting key indicators.
The Year Book series was established in 2003 and currently the 10th edition of the UNEP Year Book is being prepared. The Year Book series responds to the need to enhance the use of scientific evidence in environmental decision-making. The production of the Year Book is directly mandated by the Governments and through the Year Book, UNEP manages a key process for bridging the science-policy gap and bringing scientific knowledge into the policy domain to foster actionable responses. Topics recently covered by the UNEP Year Book series include: The benefits of soil carbon, nuclear decommissioning, plastic debris from the ocean, phosphorus and food production and emerging perspectives forest biodiversity.
The UNEP Year Book is prepared by UNEP together with the Scientific Committee on Problems of the Environment and individual experts. The series aims to raise awareness of emerging environmental issues from scientific research and other sources. The UNEP foresight process and Global Environment Outlook reports are instrumental in the identification of issues.
Ten years after the first Year Book in this series appeared, a special e-book anniversary edition – UNEP Year Book 2014 – presents a fresh look at ten issues highlighted over the past decade. This UNEP Year Book 2014 takes advantage of the latest technology, providing a multi-media experience that helps illustrate the environmental challenges we face today and some of the innovative solutions that have been created to solve those challenges. Video, animations, data visualization and stunning images from around the world help tell the stories.
The UNEP Year Book 2013 shows that changes in the Arctic will have consequences far beyond this fragile region and that they require an urgent international response. The volume of chemicals in the world continues to grow, with a shift in production from developed to developing countries. To meet the goal of producing and using chemicals in ways that minimize significant impacts on health and the environment by 2020, we need to step up efforts to reduce the use of toxic chemicals, promote safer alternatives and build capacity for sound chemicals management. Adequate information for minimizing chemical risks is essential to support these efforts. The UNEP Year Book series examines emerging environmental issues and policy-relevant events and developments.
The UNEP Year Book 2012 shows that we have been experiencing an exceptional level of ecological extremes. However, scientists and policy makers have been making headway on addressing some of the most pressing environmental issues. The 2012 Year Book presents the most important events and developments from the year, gives a picture of the status of key environmental indicators, and also highlights two emerging issues in detail: the benefits of soil carbon and the decommissioning of nuclear power plants. The Year Book is intended to strengthen the science-policy interface by informing interested parties about the most relevant environmental issues.
The UNEP Year Book 2011 underlines some of the successes achieved when science is fully brought into service for sustainable development. Yet, it also spotlights that many of the international responses to the challenges remain at best a patchwork: at worst, often far behind the scale and pace of environmental change being witnessed today.
The 2011 Year Book showcases and explains three emerging issues. The first—the wider impacts of phosphorus use in food production, pointing to concerns over the future availability of phosphorus supplies —in contrast with the millions of tonnes of fertilizer washed from the land into the seas triggering algal blooms and damage to fish stocks and tourism-based industries.
It also spotlights growing scientific concern over the chemical and material impact of marine litter on wildlife and the human food chain, as well as the crucial role of biodiversity in maintaining healthy forests.
The UNEP Yearbook 2010 is essential, informative and authoritative reading and within six chapters the Year Book addresses the following: In 2009, efforts to advance international environmental governance focused on defining key objectives and functions for an improved UN architecture to address global environmental change.
Ecosystems are being pushed beyond thresholds. Drivers of change that lead to biodiversity loss and changes in ecosystem services are growing in intensity. Dead zones in coastal areas have doubled in extent every decade since the 1960s. Much work remains to be done to reduce and mitigate the effects of harmful substances and hazardous waste on human health and the environment. Many unanswered questions remain about nanomaterials.
The effects of increasing atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations are better understood, as more indicators of climate change are being assessed. Direct observations and modelling indicate that the planets tropical belt is expanding. Sustainable natural resource management can reduce vulnerability to disasters and conflicts and support peacebuilding. Promising tools to reduce disaster conflict risks are being integrated into policy and institutional structures. Better managing material and energy flows will help meet challenges associated with environmental impacts and advance decoupling of economic growth and resource use.
The UNEP Year Book 2009 presents work in progress on scientific understanding of global environmental change, as well as foresight about possible issues on the horizon.
The aim is to raise awareness of the interlinkages among environmental issues that can accelerate the rates of change and threaten human wellbeing.
The UNEP Year Book 2008 highlights the increasing complexity and interconnections of climate change, ecosystem integrity, human well-being, and economic development.
It examines the emergence and influence of economic mechanisms and market driven approaches for addressing environmental degradation, and it describes recent research findings and policy decisions that affect our awareness of and response to changes in our global climate and environment.
The GEO Year Book 2007 is essential, informative, and authoritative reading for anyone with a role or an interest in our changing environment.
The 2007 Year Book includes global and regional overviews of significant developments over the past year. It highlights linkages among ecosystem health, human well-being, and economic development examines new thinking on the value of ecosystem services and the threat from ecosystem degradation and describes recent research findings and policy decisions that affect our awareness and response to global change.
The emerging scientific and policy challenges of nanotechnology are examined from an environmental perspective. Nanotechnology will bring environmental benefits but it is vital that we adopt appropriate assessment and legislative process to address the unique challenges presented by nanomaterials and their life cycles.
The GEO-indicators chapter provides an up-to-date graphic representation of key trends and growing stresses on the environment that supports all life on the planet.
The GEO Year Book 2006 is the third annual survey of the changing global environment produced by the United Nations Environment Programme, in collaboration with many world experts in environmental research and action.
The Year Book includes global and regional overviews. It highlights the linkages between environmental well-being, vulnerability and poverty records recent findings on the value of ecosystem services and describes new research findings on polar and ocean changes that may prove a turning point in the urgency of our awareness and response to global change.
The GEO Year Book 2004/5 is the second in an important series which serves as a guide for policy makers and a stimulus to future action towards the achievement of sustainable development. A spin-off product of UNEP's flagship report, Global Environment Outlook (GEO), it aims to bridge the gap between science and policy by highlighting the major global and regional environment issues and developments of the year and their implications on focusing on major policy developments and instruments that have a bearing on sustainable development.
The GEO Year Book is UNEPs response to this GC/GMEF decision. It is based on comprehensive tracking at global and regional level of issues and developments as they unfolded during the year, and collaboration between UNEP and many partners at both levels. The Year Book also becomes the latest addition to the set of products developed within UNEPs GEO process for integrated environmental assessment. Like them, it aims to bridge the gap between science and policy, and make environmental information easily accessible to policy-makers and other readers.
