Poverty, malnutrition, and hunger are a result of politics, not scarcity, says Barbara Unmüssig.

Every year, we waste or lose 1.3bn metric tonnes of food — one third of the world’s annual food production. The sheer scale of the number makes it almost impossible to grasp, no matter how one approaches it. Try to imagine 143,000 Eiffel Towers stacked one on top of another.

In a message to the conference in Stockholm, secretary general of the UN Ban Ki-moon sent his best wishes and gratitude to the IPCC, and said the “world’s eyes” are on the city today.

UN experts met to review a draft report that raises the probability that climate change is man-made to 95% and warns of ever more extreme weather unless governments act.

The world must clamp down hard on the illegal global wildlife trade, the head of the UN’s environment agency warned yesterday, calling it a multibillion-dollar criminal business that is threatening to wipe out the planet’s most iconic species.

Rising wealth in Asia and fishing subsidies are among factors driving over-exploitation of the world’s fish resources, while fish habitat is being destroyed by pollution, UN marine experts said.

SALES of household electrical gadgets will boom across the developing world in the next decade, wreaking environmental havoc if there are no new strategies to deal with the discarded TVs, cell phones and computers, a UN report said yesterday.

The world faces being swamped with a tidal wave of electronic waste as sales of household gadgets boom over the next decade, according to a report out today.

A massive mile-thick brown pollution haze has settled over vast areas of the planet, changing weather patterns and threatening health and crops, according to the UN.

Glaciers are shrinking at record rates and many could disappear within decades, the UN Environment Programme said today.

THE UN yesterday announced it would become “climate neutral”, starting by offsetting the greenhouse gas emissions caused by travel to the Bali conference on climate change.

THE radio came on the other morning at 7 o’clock as usual: “We are now facing the end of the world as we know it”. My ears pricked up. I was instantly wide awake. What could this be? An exchange of nuclear weapons? A terrorist attack? A trailer for a new series of Doctor Who?

About one quarter of World Bank development programmes may be at risk because of climate change, the organisation warned at an environmental summit.

United Nations and international maritime agencies promised to give Lebanon immediate technical advice today to help clean up an oil slick, and warned the operation could cost more than €50m.

More than 240 women from at least 50 countries accused UN secretary-general Kofi Annan yesterday of paying lip service to gender equality but failing to take action to promote women and their rights.

Experts have began setting up a bird flu early warning system by mapping routes that are taken by migrating species and places where they rest during their annual travel, United Nations officials said today.

Urgent investment is needed in North Korea to deal with serious environmental problems that have depleted the country’s forests, contaminated water supplies and polluted the air, the United Nations’ top environmental official has said.