GRID-Arendal: 30 Years of Making a Difference

Many Strong Voices (MSV), a programme that brings together people and organizations in the Arctic and Small Island Developing States (SIDS) to take action on climate change, was voted by readers of The Guardian as one of the most influential campaigns on raising awareness on climate change. “Many Strong Voices is a really powerful project. The voices of affected communities are, in general, absent from most climate change campaigning, but here, people who are affected by climate change speak for themselves about what it means to them.”… a quote from a reader GRID-Arendal and IPEN published a shocking report, Toxic metals in children’s products: an insight into the market in Eastern Europe, the Caucasus and Central Asia , which revealed that approximately 30% of toys tested from Eastern Europe and Central Asian countries contained at least one toxic metal where 3% exceeded the limit for mercury. Moreover, in some products, the mercury limit was exceeded by more than 170 times. A report prepared by GRID-Arendal for UNEP, Mercury: Time To Act , identified global sources of mercury and assessed their impacts on human health. The publication revealed that artisanal and small-scale gold mining together with coal combustion contribute to approximately 61% of total annual anthropogenic emissions of mercury to the air. The Zambezi River Basin Atlas of the Changing Environment , the first of its kind in the Zambezi River Basin and in southern Africa, was launched in May in Luanda, Angola at a The Atlas uses satellite images, high resolution photographs, illustrative text and graphics to present various socio-economic issues in the Zambezi basin, and provides striking evidence that can be used as a basis for intervention at local, national, regional and basin levels.

2013