Cross-cutting Reports
Frontiers Series
UNEP’s FRONTIERS Report series published since 2015 highlights emerging issues of global environmental concern and provides solutions for an effective and timely response to those issues. In each report, new scientific findings, approaches and technologies are discussed for three to six issues and recommendations for policy-makers and other stakeholders are provided to help them tackle the assessed issues successfully. Each report is launched biennially in the run up to the UN Environment Assembly with the aim to inform the discussions and negotiations among UN Member States.
Frontiers 2022
This year’s edition, Noise, Blazes and Mismatches, looks at three concerns: urban soundscapes, wildfires and phenological shifts.
Frontiers 2018/2019
Large-scale industrialization has resulted in widespread fragmentation of previously intact landscapes around the globe.
Frontiers 2017
Growing antibiotic resistance is emerging as one of the biggest global public health concerns of the twenty-first century.
Frontiers 2016
UNEP, through the Frontiers’ report, alerted the world on zoonotic diseases – those that jump from animals to humans.
Making Peace with Nature
UNEP’s first synthesis report, “Making Peace with Nature: A scientific blueprint to tackle the climate, biodiversity and pollution emergencies” was published in February 2021 in the run-up to the fifth session of the UN Environment Assembly (UNEA-5.1). The report summarizes and assesses key findings of the latest global scientific environmental assessments with the aim to support initiatives and decision-making in pursuit of sustainable development. The report translates the current state of environmental knowledge on global emergencies into crisp, clear and digestible facts-based messages and recommendations that the world can relate to and should follow up on.
The resulting synthesis communicates how climate change, biodiversity loss and pollution can be tackled jointly within the framework of the Sustainable Development Goals.
Contact persons:RacheL kosse and Edoardo Zandri
Mainstreaming lakes and Wetlands
UNEP considers the mainstreaming of natural lakes and wetlands into the Global Water Agenda and the Sustainable Development Goals key to the success of these global initiatives. Lakes and wetlands serve as biodiversity hotspots, help regulate the climate and can reduce pollution. They play a key role in stimulating nature-based solutions (NbS) for people and planet. In this way, they serve as vehicles that can help tackle the triple global crises the world faces today. This brochure highlights why and how the issue of lakes and wetlands can be mainstreamed and serve humanity in its journey towards sustainability.
Lakes and wetlands serve as biodiversity hotspots, help regulate the climate and can reduce pollution.
Contact persons: Patrick M'mayi and Maarten Kappelle
Global Environment Outlook
The GEO 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.
It is UNEP's flagship report because it fulfills the core functions of the organization, which date back to the UN General Assembly resolution that established the UN Environment Programme in 1972.
Contact persons:Pierre Boileau
Contact us:unep-science-geohead@un.org
