United Nations Day (UN Day) is observed annually worldwide on 24 October to commemorate the founding of the United Nations in October 1945. To celebrate UN Day 2009, on Friday, 23 October, the UNU presented an academic symposium and, along with UN agencies in Japan, welcomed the public to outdoor activities, exhibitions and performances at United Nations…

Day 1 — Monday, 28 September 2009

Over 300 people gathered in U Thant Hall at UNU Headquarters in Tokyo on Monday, 28 September, for day 1 of the 2009 UNU/UNESCO international conference on “Africa and Globalization: Learning from the Past, Enabling a Better Future”. Japanese government representatives Tetsuro Fukuyama (MOFA), and Masaharu Nakagawa (MEXT) offered opening…

In 2006, more than 1 billion cell phones, 230 million computers, and 45 million TVs were sold worldwide. What will be the fate of these complex electronic products when they are eventually replaced or discarded?

The sad fact is that much of the world’s electronic scrap ends up in developing countries, where it typically is incinerated to…

In the Our World 2.0 article “One man inspiring Hope”, Hope He tells the story of Wan Ping, a former thermo-dynmics engineer who nine years ago founded an ecological demonstration area in the Khorchin district of northeastern China. His efforts have established a windbreak that has stabilized moving dunes, achieved a 95% green coverage rate in the demonstration area, and increased local precipitation.

On 6 July, UNU Rector Konrad Osterwalder addressed an audience of almost 1,000 participants from 148 countries at the second World Conference on Higher Education, at UNESCO Headquarters in Paris. Attendees included government ministers, university rectors, faculty and students as well as representatives of the private sector and regional and multilateral institutions.

The conference drew on the experiences…

On 1 July, during an official visit to Tokyo at the invitation of the government of Japan, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon visited the United Nations University Headquarters. After being welcomed by UNU Rector Konrad Osterwalder, the Secretary-General first met with the heads of UN agencies in Japan.

Secretary-General Ban then spoke at a “town hall” meeting…

Adaptation to climate change has emerged as one of the most important concerns in the global development agenda. However, the knowledge gap on adaptation is vast; knowledge and expertise remains primarily at the international level, and is not reaching those in the developing world who need it most. Higher education institutions can play a critical role…

The report “In Search of Shelter: Mapping the Effects of Climate Change on Human Migration and Displacement”, by Dr. Koko Warner (UNU-EHS) and Dr. Charles Ehrhart (CARE International), highlights that climate change is already contributing to migration and displacement and predicts that there will be tens of millions of migrants within the next few years.

These findings…

In recognition of World Environment Day 2009, UNU has collaborated with YouTube Japan to support a special channel called Think Green.

More than 15 million viewers access YouTube each month in Japan. In order to help this community find videos that encourage them to think about environmental topics, YouTube has collaborated with some of its premium partners…

In the last week of May, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon paid a visit to UNU-WIDER in Helsinki as part of his first official mission to Finland. After greeting members of the UNU-WIDER staff, the Secretary-General was formally welcomed by UNU-WIDER Deputy Director and Officer-in-Charge Professor Augustin Fosu. Following a briefing on the work of UNU-WIDER, the Secretary-General expressed his thanks and pointed out that the institute has a key role to play in the current global turndown.

Secretary-General Ban added that he was looking to research institutes like UNU-WIDER to use their analytical capacity to promote understanding of the multitude of crises facing the world and to stimulate debate on how to assist the poorest and most vulnerable people, particularly in Africa.

Professor Finn Tarp of Denmark has been appointed as the next Director of the UNU World Institute for Development Economics Research (UNU-WIDER). Director-Designate Tarp will take up the post on 1 September 2009. He succeeds Prof. Anthony Shorrocks, who served as UNU-WIDER Director from 1 January 2001 through 30 April 2009.

UNU-WIDER, based in Helsinki, Finland, undertakes…

“The Financial Crisis and Its Impact on Africa” was the subject of this year’s UNU Africa Day Symposium, held May 25 at UNU Headquarters in Tokyo. These symposiums are organised annually by UNU and the African Diplomatic Corps in Tokyo with support from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan. This year we celebrated the tenth…

To commemorate International Women’s Day 2009, the UNU joined with 15 other UN-related organizations in Japan to hold a public forum at UNU Headquarters in Tokyo on Friday, 6 March. The forum’s theme drew attention to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s multi-year (2008–2015) campaign “UNite to End Violence against Women”.

In a message read at the forum, Secretary-General Ban warned that the consequences of socially ingrained violence against women “go beyond the visible and immediate. Death, injury, medical costs and lost employment are but the tip of an iceberg. The impact on women and girls, their families, their communities and their societies in terms of shattered lives and livelihoods is beyond calculation. Far too often, crimes go unpunished, and perpetrators walk free.”

The strengthening alliance between scientists and curators in the battle to save some of humanity’s greatest art and cultural treasures was the focus of a four-day international conference in Caracas, co-sponsored by UNU-BIOLAC.

“Storing and protecting entire collections safely has become a priority and scientists have a key role: developing techniques and procedures that are fundamental to heritage conservation,” said UNU-BIOLAC Director José-Luis Ramirez.

Many of the world’s cultural treasures are made of organic materials such as paper, canvas, wood and leather which, in prolonged warmth and dampness, attract mould, micro-organisms and insects, causing decay and disintegration. Biotechnology techniques discussed at the conference include the use of micro-organisms to remove fungus on paintings, photos, documents and masonry.

On 1 January 2009, the United Nations University combined the UNU Environment and Sustainable Development Programme and UNU Peace and Governance Programme to create the UNU Institute for Sustainability and Peace (UNU-ISP).

While there are many peace institutes and environmental institutes around the world, UNU-ISP is unique in that its innovative approach to sustainability combines both topics. UNU-ISP aspires to achieve a greater understanding of the broad, intersecting themes that extend across three of the most-pressing issues on the UN agenda: (i) global change and sustainability, (ii) international cooperation and development, and (iii) peacebuilding and security.

UNU’s Our World 2.0 web magazine has won the 2008 Weblog Award for Best Blog Design. In the field of 10 finalists, Our World 2.0 received 31% of the votes, 4% more than the second-place finisher.

The Weblog Awards are the world’s largest blog competition. In 2008, more than 933,000 votes were cast in 48 categories over seven days of…

The United Nations University Vice Rectorate in Europe — in collaboration with UNU Vice-Rector Govindan Parayil, who is in charge of e-learning at the UNU Headquarters, and the UNU Media Studio — hosted a strategic workshop on 26 and 27 November 2008 at the UN Campus in Bonn.

This two-day workshop explored the role of e-learning at…

A new coordinated international set of rules to govern commercial and research activities in both polar regions is urgently needed to reflect new environmental realities and to temper pressure building on these highly fragile ecosystems, according to experts attending a UN University-affiliated conference in Iceland marking the International Polar Year. At the conference, leading scholars detailed fast-emerging issues in international law and policy in the polar regions, identified priorities for law-making and research and offered advice to decision makers.

Evaporation and ongoing destruction of world wetlands, which hold a volume of carbon similar to that in the atmosphere today, could cause them to exhale billows of greenhouse gases, according to scientists attending the 8th INTECOL International Wetlands Conference in the Brazilian city of Cuiaba on the edge of South America’s vast Pantanal wetland region.

They called…

UN University Rector Konrad Osterwalder has announced the appointment of Prof. Kazuhiko Takeuchi, of Japan, and Prof. Govindan Parayil, of India, as UNU Vice Rectors. The appointees bring considerable expertise to their new positions and will help to strengthen the strategic management and operation of the global UNU system of of UNU Centre in Tokyo, where…

The new UN University website – Our World 2.0 – is devoted to examining the most critical problems of our time: climate change, peak oil, and the food crisis. It asks the question: What can we do when faced with these complex, inter-connected and pressing problems?

UN University mounted a major effort to support the fourth Tokyo International Conference on African Development (TICAD IV), a three-day summit in Yokohama designed to establish a framework for a century of African growth.

Representatives from 51 African countries, including 40 heads of state, joined Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda in signing the “Yokohama Declaration”, outlining principles for…