SDG13 Climate Action

UNEP, UNESCO and Startup Inside is organizing a global virtual conference AI for the Planet on 16 February 2021. The event will look into how artificial intelligence is used to contribute to our environmental sustainability and scale.

This webinar, the first of a series of three dedicated to the Partnership in Action report, will see how countries are integrating climate action into domestic policy, planning, budget, and SDG agendas across government in the COVID-19 era, including using climate action as a basis for economic recovery and involving many varied actions.

The TanSat mission is the first Chinese mini-satellite dedicated to the detection and monitoring of carbon dioxide (CO2). In 2016, the satellite was launched into space, making China the third country after Japan and the United States of America to monitor greenhouse gas emissions through its own satellite. The data collected by TanSat has helped to improve the understanding of global carbon dioxide distribution, its seasonal variation, and its impacts on climate change.

To help address the challenges of drought monitoring, Mongolia became the first pilot country for ESCAP’s Regional Drought Mechanism. The process began in 2013 following a request to ESCAP to pilot the Mechanism through the Mongolian National Remote Sensing Centre (NRSC) within the Information and Research Institute of Meteorology, Hydrology and Environment (IRIMHE).

The 2019 cyclonic storm ‘Fani’ was one of the severest cyclones, in the past two decades, to hit the Bay of Bengal, affecting around 100 million people in South Asia. The cyclone travelled from India's Andaman Islands to Mount Everest in Nepal. Among the countries impacted along its way, India and Bangladesh faced the most extreme damages. A similar cyclone, the Odisha cyclone that occurred in 1999, caused more than 10,000 deaths in these two countries.

In early April 2020, tropical cyclone Harold, a severe category 5 cyclone, hit countries within the Pacific region, causing major damage and widespread destruction.

The Geostationary Environment Monitoring Spectrometer (GEMS), launched by the Republic of Korea in February 2020, enables the hourly monitoring of air pollution levels for almost 20 countries in Asia. Specifically, countries covered by the project include Cambodia, the Lao People’s Democratic Republic, Malaysia, Myanmar, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, Viet Nam (ASEAN); Bangladesh, Bhutan, Nepal and Sri Lanka in South Asia; and China, Japan and the Republic of Korea in North-East Asia.

UNEP is leading a session on locally-led and urban Ecosystem-based Adaptation (EbA) in Asia-Pacific and on an urban EbA decision-making toolkit at the Gobeshona Global Conference on January 19, 2021.  

The year 2020 has been the year of COVID-19. The fallout of the pandemic is expected to significantly influence the ability of countries to plan for, finance and implement adaptation actions in response to current and future climate impacts, disproportionately affecting the most vulnerable countries and population groups.