Ban Ki-moon welcomes new report on efforts to green the UN, saying sustainability can make the UN “more efficient, more effective and less exposed to risk”

The Secretary General makes the statement in the Foreword of the UN’s new sustainability report, Moving Towards a Climate Neutral UN 2010, which is launched at the CEB meeting in Nairobi 1st April 2011.

The report reveals the total greenhouse gas emissions from 52 UN organizations employing over 200,000 staff in 2009.

The result is 1.7 million tonnes of CO2 equivalent, or 8.3 tonnes per capita. Over 50% of these are from air travel and 37% are from buildings. The report also provides details of efforts to reduce these emissions and outlines ambitions to move beyond climate change to address wider sustainability impacts.

According to Ban Ki-moon, the work of greening the UN is driven by a moral imperative:

“The United Nations has played a key role in elevating the profile of climate change on the international agenda, and continues to support Member States in their efforts to reduce emissions, strengthen adaptation and respond to this immense global challenge. Such work has a natural complement in our in-house drive to reduce the UN’s own carbon footprint. What we demand of others, we must do ourselves.”

Greening of  IFAD 

IFAD is focusing on the adoption and promotion of best practices and measures to reduce its environmental footprint and contribute to achieving sustainable and climate-neutral facilities.  Some achievements to date:

• In 2009 IFAD was awarded the prestigious LEED certification by the US Green Building Council. This internationally recognized green building certification was awarded, at the Gold level, in recognition of IFAD's state-of-the-art headquarters design and environmental management practices.
• A 12 % reduction in consumption of electricity between 2008 and 2009, and an additional 3.2 % reduction in 2010.
• All electricity purchased in 2009 and 2010 has been certified as green energy by the Renewable Energy Certificate System (RECS).
• Power consumption in the IFAD data centre has remained unchanged since 2008, despite the growing demand for computing resources.  Further, new “blade” technology being introduced in the data centre will decrease future power consumption.
• Provision of shuttle bus to metro station to reduce car usage by staff.
• Implementation of parking fees to encourage use of public transport.
• Installing drinking water fountains to reduce usage of plastic water bottles in 2011.

IFAD will continue to move forward, exploring new ways to achieve an even greener workplace and further reduce its carbon imprint.  Over the coming years some of the next steps include:

• Better measurement and monitoring of our emissions and environmental footprint - with clear and monitorable goals for improvement.
• Explore further reductions in emissions from travel, including measures to further reduce carbon imprint of duty travel to be introduced by the new travel guidelines in 2011 – e.g. by using available alternative technologies such as videoconferencing. More widely, IFAD will explore further ways to encourage green ways of travelling to work.  Together with UNEP, IFAD is also developing “green ratings” to guide our choice of hotels.¹
• New sustainable corporate procurement policies - IFAD, in close cooperation with FAO and WFP, will introduce a sustainable procurement policy in 2011, selecting products and services on the basis not only of their technical and economical characteristics, but also of their impact on the environment throughout their life cycle (raw materials, production process, use, reuse/recycling, and waste disposal).
• Greener facilities - IFAD will explore the feasibility of achieving Platinum LEED standard certification for the headquarter to further reduce its carbon imprint and enhance the sustainability of its headquarters. IFAD will explore further ways to provide sustainable food services with its current catering services provider to serve a variety of healthy and sustainable dishes with minimal or positive impacts on the environment. For future retendering of the catering services IFAD will emphasize sustainability requirements in the solicitation and evaluation criteria.

Further details about the process and the actions of individual organizations are available on the greening the blue website

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1/ Moving Towards a Climate Neutral UN 2010 represents the result of a year-long UN-wide process coordinated by the United Nations Environment Programme.  The report details of the greenhouse gas emissions of 52 individual UN organizations, efforts to reduce them, case studies, key challenges faced in greening the UN and next steps.