ESCWA participated in a UN Day organized by the UN Information Center (UNIC Beirut) and the Lebanese American University (LAU) at the latter's Beirut campus 27 April in which 17 UN agencies and programs participated. A ceremony launching the event was attended by ambassadors, diplomats, media representatives, UN officials as well as faculty members, students and alumni of LAU.

Speak your mind in pictures! If you have ideas for a more sustainable UN and fancy yourself a photographer, share your pictures with us and be an agent of change. To celebrate the World Environment Day 2011, Greening the Blue – a UN program to make all its agencies climate neutral and green - and the UN Photographic Society have joined forces to launch the first in-house photographic competition that celebrates and inspires efforts to make the UN more sustainable. Visions of a Sustainable UN is the central theme of this photo competition.

ESCWA wrapped-up the twelfth session of its Transport Committee with recommendations that highlighted road safety, an issue member countries were called to consider a priority, implementing by such the eponym UN Decade of Action launched last week.

The committee had convened at the UN House in Beirut, on 17-19 May. A slew of officials gathered for the event, including representatives from ESCWA’s 14 member countries, and regional as well as international organizations.

Investing an additional USD 40 billion a year in the forestry sector could halve deforestation rates by 2030, increase tree planting by around 140 percent by 2050, and catalyze the creation of millions of new jobs. Those were among main findings of a report on forests produced by the UN Environment Program (UNEP) and launched today by the UN Communications Group in a press conference in Beirut on the occasion of World Environment Day 2011 (WED).