30 Years of Innovation and Excellence: GRID-Arendal Annual Report 2019

Foreword For three decades, GRID-Arendal has had a thriving partnership with the UN Environment Programme, communicating about science to spur policy action. Together, we have worked to fight climate change, protect biodiversity, prevent pollution, and much more.

The next decade may be the most decisive yet, as we push to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals and preserve a livable climate, and GRID-Arendal will continue to be a vital partner in these efforts. GRID-Arendal’s work spans across UNEP’s priorities and around the globe. The organization is playing a leading role in assessing and advocating for nature- based solutions to climate change, from promoting protection of seagrass to facilitating community-led mangrove restoration. It is providing strategic support to the Tehran Convention, which aims to protect the Caspian Sea, and to the Abidjan Convention, which focuses on marine area protection in West, Central and Southern Africa. GRID-Arendal is playing a key role in our Vanishing Treasures project, which is fostering the health of endangered mountain species and nearby human communities. It is doing groundbreaking work

on waste, such as gathering local knowledge on marine litter in West Africa and exposing the unexpected links between gender inequality and waste management. These are just a few of the important projects we’ve undertaken together. GRID-Arendal also played a critical role in producing flagship UNEP publications in 2019, including the sixth Global Environment Outlook (GEO-6) and our “Global Linkages” report and graphics on the changing Arctic – outputs that helped tell the world about our environmental challenges and what we as a global community must do to address them. UNEP congratulates GRID-Arendal on 30 years of rigorous, creative, meaningful work. We look forward to collaborating in the crucial years ahead to build a future in which both people and nature thrive.

Jian Liu Chief Scientist and Director of the Science Division UN Environment Programme

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