6 March 2017 – The United Nations aviation body today adopted new aircraft emissions to curb the impact of aviation greenhouse gas emissions on the global climate.

The Standard will apply to new aircraft type designs from 2020, and to aircraft type designs already in-production as of 2023, according to the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO).

The President of the ICAO Council, Olumuyiwa Benard Aliu, called the decision “pioneering.”

“Air transport [is] the first industry sector globally to adopt a CO₂ emissions design certification standard,” Mr. Aliu said.

The decision by the 36-member States of the ICAO Council follows a move last October curb carbon emissions from passenger and cargo airplanes as of 2020 through a carbon offset mechanism, which is voluntary until 2027.

The ICAO Secretary General, Fang Liu, said the accomplishment is “historic” and places aviation in “an even better position as we look forward to a greener era of air transport development.”

6 March 2017 – As a severe drought deepens in Somalia, the risk of famine is looming in the long-troubled country, with about half the population in need of some form of assistance, according to an assessment by United Nations agencies and humanitarian partners.

The situation has become “significantly worse in the last six months,” explained Joseph Contreras, the spokesperson for the UN Assistance Mission in Somalia (UNSOM).

“Currently, approximately 6.2 million Somalis are in need of humanitarian assistance, of that number, three million are in need or urgent life saving measures. This is a significant step up from the 1.1 million Somalis that were in such circumstances, such need for life saving measures in September,” he said.

In addition, the UN reports that nearly 950,000 children under the age of five will be acutely malnourished this year, with 185,000 of that number at risk of death without immediate medical treatment.

Citing ‘worrying similarities’ to the 2011 famine in Somalia, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) this past Friday launched a $24.6 million appeal the more than one million Somalis most affected by the drought.

“We named this (2017) drought ‘Odi Kawayn,’ which is Somali for ‘something bigger than the elders,’” drought victim Halima told the agency, explaining that none of the elders has ever seen a drought as severe as this one.

A massive increase in aid is urgently needed to avert a famine. IOM reports that wages are collapsing, local food prices are rising, animal deaths are increasing, and malnutrition rates are starting to rise. Moreover, water prices are spiralling and Somalis are moving in growing numbers in search of food and water. Without assistance, many people face malnutrition, significantly increased risk of disease, loss of livelihoods and even death.

Emergency Relief Coordinator Stephen O’Brien (right), is joined by Humanitarian Coordinator for Somalia, Peter de Clercq (left), and head of the UN Mission in Somalia Michael Keating on arrival in Mogadishu, Somalia, where five and a half million people need urgent assistance over the next six months. Photo: OCHA

Meanwhile today, the UN Emergency Relief Coordinator, Stephen O’Brien, visited the Zone K Internal Displacement Camp (IDP) Settlement located in the Hodan district of the Somali capital, Mogadishu.

“We understand their hunger, their thirst and their need to look after their children,” said Mr. O’Brien, noting that by seeing it for himself, “we can make this story known to a much bigger world and try to help.”

“You need to know that you touch our hearts,” he said to the drought victims.

According to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), which Mr. O’Brien heads up, Zone K first became an IDP settlement in 2011, when a large number of drought affected people from Lower Shabelle, Bay and Bakool regions settled.

It became one of the biggest IDP settlements in Mogadishu but, according to OCHA, the exact number of the people in Zone K is currently unknown.

“Whenever you have enormous pressure on people’s ability to survive or to be protected in conflict, you will get internal displacements, and here we have a severe trend of internal displacement,” explained Mr. O’Brien, noting the need to act “fast, now and together” in order to fund the programmes that would help support people in their hour of need.

Humanitarians in Somalia are seeking an overall $825 million to reach the most vulnerable with life-saving assistance until June 2017.

In a press release, the Humanitarian Coordinator in the country, Peter de Clercq, stated that the “drought situation is deteriorating rapidly.” At this “critical phase,” he highlighted the need to “act fast and efficiently to avoid the worst.”

Mr. Contreras told UN News that whereas in 2011, the drought – and the resulting famine – was concentrated in South Central Somalia, this year, it is affecting more parts of the country, including the north-eastern and the Somaliland regions, with a higher total number of people at risk.

However, he mentioned that the donor community is responding “more energetically” and humanitarian partners have a larger presence around the country to respond to these emergency needs.

Mr. Contreras also noted that Somalia has a new Government, and that the country’s new President, Mohamed Abdullahi ‘Farmajo’, is “completely committed to a robust and effective response to this crisis.”

6 March 2017 – The crisis in Africa’s Lake Chad Basin is of global concern and action is needed “right now,” the United Nations Security Council today said, wrapping up its four-country tour with the promise of long-term support for the Governments and the people in their fight against Boko Haram.

“Neither the military fight against terrorism nor the immediate humanitarian response will solve these protracted crises,” Ambassador Matthew Rycroft of the United Kingdom, who is leading the Council visit as President of the 15-nation body for the month of March, told journalists in Abuja.

He spoke alongside Edward Kallon, the UN Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator in Nigeria, as well as Fodé Seck, Representative of Senegal to the United Nations, and Michele Sison, Deputy Representative of the United States to the United Nations.

“What is needed in the end is long-term development,” Mr. Rycroft said, noting the need for jobs, education, human rights, services for displaced people and refugees, and solutions for coping with drought and other environmental challenges.

“Those are multifaceted, complex set of problems and require a holistic set of solutions, and we are here to support the Government of Nigeria in finding those solutions,” he vowed.

Yesterday, the Council members met with internally displaced persons (IDPs) at the Teacher Village in Maiduguri, in hard-hit Borno state in the north-eastern part of the country. About half of the displaced persons living in the camp are children, with 379 of them infants.

The Council members joined a circle of survivors, many of whom were women whose husbands and children were killed by Boko Haram, and who are struggling to feed themselves and the remnants of families that they have left.

Members of the UN Security Council mission on a visit to the Lake Chad Basin visited the Economic Community Of West African States (ECOWAS) and discussed challenges that the region is facing. Photo: Japan/UN Mission

“Their accounts of a life in crisis were beyond sobering,” Mr. Rycroft said.

The displaced camp is in Maiduguri, which is known as the epicentre of the years long Boko Haram crisis, according to Governor Kashim Shettima, who spoke with the Council members.

Some 14 million people are affected by Boko Haram, with 8.5 million people in urgent need of humanitarian aid.

While in Nigeria, the Council also met with women’s groups from across the country who called for a greater role in finding solutions to the Lake Chad Basin crisis.

“We can pass information faster than the men,” one woman told the Council.

The Council members also spoke with members of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), a regional group of 16 countries, with discussions focused on coordination of response and sharing of information.

The Council also met with Nigeria’s acting President, Yemi Osinbajo, and other senior political leaders.

After visiting Nigeria, and previously being in Cameroon, Chad and Niger, the Council emphasized that “barely enough is being done” to aid the crisis in the Lake Chad Basin.

“The scale we have seen is of a growing crisis. Famine is being averted at the moment because of the generosity of donors and the effectiveness of the national responses – but only just,” Mr. Rycroft said, adding: “We urge the international community as a whole to continue to step up before it is too late. And that means right now.”

6 March 2017 – The head of the United Nations atomic energy agency today expressed serious concern about the nuclear programme of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK), as he also provided an update on the agency’s verification and monitoring activities in Iran.

“It is deeply regrettable that the DPRK has shown no indication that it is willing to comply with the UN Security Council resolutions adopted in response to its two nuclear tests last year,” said International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Director General Yukiya Amano in his opening statement to a regular meeting of the agency’s Board of Governors.

“I again call upon the DPRK to comply fully with its obligations under Security Council resolutions, to cooperate promptly with the Agency, and to resolve all outstanding issues, including those that have arisen during the absence of Agency inspectors from the country,” he said.

According to news reports, it fired four ballistic missiles into the sea off Japan’s northwest on Monday.

On Iran’s implementation of its nuclear-related commitments under the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action since January 2016, Mr. Amano said the IAEA is continuing evaluations regarding the absence of undeclared nuclear material and activities in that country.

Wide view of delegates attending the 1453rd Board of Governors Meeting. IAEA, Vienna, Austria, 6 March 2017. Photo: IAEA/Dean Calma

The Board, a policymaking body, meets five times a year at the IAEA headquarters in Vienna, Austria.

On nuclear safety and security, Mr. Amano emphasised the importance of building on the A HREF=”https://www.iaea.org/newscenter/focus/nuclear-safety-action-plan”>Action Plan for Nuclear Safety that was adopted following the accident at Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi that occurred when an earthquake and tsunami struck in 2011.

“We will consider ways of further strengthening our work in nuclear, radiation, transport and waste safety,” he said, adding that the IAEA will continue to focus on regulatory effectiveness, safety culture and capacity-building.

In that regard, he stressed the importance of a peer review process under the Convention on Nuclear Safety (CNS), drawing attention to the seventh review meeting of contracting parties to CNS that will take place in Vienna from 27 March to 7 April while encouraging all countries that have not yet done so to join the CNS.

On nuclear energy, Mr. Amano underscored the significant contribution of nuclear power to meeting the goal set under the Paris Agreement on Climate Change of holding the increase in global temperature well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels, and to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

6 March 2017 – More than 1,000 delegates from across the Americas will meet this week at a United Nations-backed conference in the Canadian city of Montreal to agree a Regional Action Plan designed to reduce the loss of life due to disasters, both natural and man-made.

Officially known as the Fifth Regional Platform for Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR) in the Americas, the three-day event which opens Tuesday 7 March, is the first major conference in the region following up on the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction, adopted in 2015 in the Japanese city of the same name.

Hosted by the Government of Canada in cooperation with the UN Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNISDR), the Regional Platform will mark the first opportunity for governments and stakeholders of the Americas to discuss and agree on a Regional Action Plan to support the implementation of the Sendai Framework for DRR 2015-2030 (Sendai Framework).

Sendai is a development framework, agreed by more than 180 countries, setting global but non-binding targets, to increase disaster preparedness, effective early warning systems and international cooperation, while at the same time reducing the impact of disasters on people, the economy, and the environment.

The platform in Montreal, which concludes on 9 March, will be the first opportunity for countries of the Americas to come together and discuss how they are going to put Sendai into practice.

“In Montreal, countries will adopt this Regional Action Plan [and] it will also provide the forum where countries will be able to discuss for the first time, how they are doing” said the head of the UN Office for Disaster Risk Reduction in the Americas, Ricardo Mena, in an interview with UN News.

Chief of UNISDR, Regional Office for The Americas, Ricardo Mena. Photo: UNISDR

The 2015 Sendai Framework was the first big intergovernmental agreement underpinning the UN-led 2030 development programme, along with the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development agreed by 193 countries later that year; the Addis Ababa Action Agenda on development finance; and the historic Paris Agreement on Climate Change.

Mr. Mena said there was a clear link between Sendai and the other pillars of the 2030 Agenda, citing the example of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), specifically Goal, on ending extreme poverty. “Disasters usually bring more people into poverty; therefore you can see disasters as a driver of potential conflicts down the road and that’s why it becomes so important, so crucial, in having investments in reducing risks.”

Montreal Platform will be a ‘big tent’ gathering for diverse stakeholders

A High-Level intergovernmental meeting on implementing the Sendai Framework across the Americas took place in Paraguay last June, but Montreal will “be a bigger tent,” said Mr. Mena.

“It’s a meeting where all the stakeholders – private sector, academia, science and technology, local authorities and civil society – are going to be participating in full force,” he said.

Noting that there are already “some quite positive signs” that implementation is well underway across the region, he cited the fact that UNISDR’s Americas office is already working with 10 countries “on the alignment of national DRR strategies and plans to the Sendai Framework spirit.”

“In some cases it’s revising existing strategies and plans, and aligning them to the Sendai Framework, in other cases it’s starting from scratch,” he added.

Mr. Mena said that getting national treasuries – and increasingly private sector investors – to think long-term about disaster risk, was the main challenge.

“Whatever is put into DRR is going to save money down the road. We know of the positive impact that DRR investments have.

“There is much more funding being put for disaster response activities, than for DRR activities […] The issue is how to integrate the DRR lens into every investment that you are about to do,” he added.

Minister in charge of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness, Ralph Goodale, said Canada is “looking forward to working with our partners across all sectors of the emergency management community both domestically and among our hemispheric partners to develop an interactive and action-oriented agenda.”

Montreal’s mayor, Denis Coderre, said the city is looking forward to playing its part, and welcoming delegates from all parts of the continent. “Montreal is also one of the Rockefeller Foundation’s 100 Resilient Cities and actively integrates the principles of urban resilience in order to better prepare for the challenges of the 21st Century,” he said.