Biography
Rafael, a national of Spain, has served in the United Nations for more than 15 years in different duty stations, with wide-ranging experience at the intersection of peace and security, and has a background in diplomacy, inter-agency coordination, the environment, and sustainable development.
Rafael joined UNEP in May of 2018 as Deputy Chief of Staff then served as Acting Chief of Staff since January 2019 until he was appointed as Chief of Staff in April 2021.
Prior to joining UNEP, Rafael served as a Senior Political Affairs Officer at the Department of Peacekeeping Operations in New York where he worked in support of the United Nations Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in the Central African Republic. Previously, he served as a Political Affairs Officer in New York working on Haiti, Somalia and other dossiers. He also served in Dakar working on regional issues, as well as in Port-au-Prince after the 2010 earthquake in Haiti. Before joining the United Nat
Biography
Andrea Hinwood (B.Sc., M.AppSc., PhD) is an environmental scientist with expertise in environmental exposures and impacts on human health. Prior to coming to UNEP, Andrea served as the first Chief Environmental Scientist at the Environment Protection Authority (EPA) in Victoria, Australia. In this role, she developed and implemented programs to enhance EPA’s role as an evidence-based scientific organisation and to prevent pollution and waste impacts on communities and the environment. She was previously an Associate Professor at Edith Cowan University in Western Australia and held appointments as a member and Deputy Chair of the Environmental Protection Authority of Western Australia and also a sessional member of the State Administrative Tribunal of Western Australia. Andrea s career has included the provision of strategic advice to the government on a wide variety of environmental matters, including ozone depleting substances, air quality, fire and smoke management
The Mississippi River Plastic Pollution Initiative is excited to have started data collection in our first pilot city of Baton Rouge, Louisiana, officiated by the Mississippi River Cities and Towns Initiative (MRCTI)’s co-chair Mayor Sharon Weston Broome. Read to learn more.
04 March 2021
The fact that substantial amounts of food are produced but not eaten by humans has substantial negative impacts: environmentally, socially and economically. Estimates suggest that 8-10% of global greenhouse gas emissions are associated with food that is not consumed.
Reducing food waste at retail, food service and household level can provide multi-faceted benefits for both people and the planet. However, the true scale of food waste and its impacts have not been well understood until now. As such, the opportunities provided by food waste reduction have remained largely untapped and under-exploited. If we want to get serious about tackling food waste, we need to increase efforts to measure food and inedible parts wasted at retail and consumer level and track food waste generation in kilograms per capita at country level. Only with reliable data, we are going to be able to track progress on Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) target 12.3, which aims at halving per capita
GEO-6 Process
The sixth edition of the Global Environment Outlook (GEO-6) provides a clear assessment of the current state of the environment, the challenges that we face and how well we have dealt with them, with due consideration given to gender, indigenous knowledge and cultural dimensions. The assessment lays the foundation for continued socio-environmental assessments across relevant scales, with a thematic as well as an integrated focus, enabling and informing societal transitions and the tracking of Sustainable Development Goal targets and goals as well as previously agreed internationally environmental goals. The enhanced policy analysis in this sixth edition is aimed at assisting member states to position themselves on the most effective pathways for transformations toward a sustainable future. The preparation of the sixth edition of the Global Environment Outlook involved various activities to bring experts and stakeholders together as well as update the world on the proc