NAIROBI, Kenya, Dec 4 – The United Nations Environment Assembly officially kicks off on Monday and will take place at the UN Nairobi headquarters in Gigiri for the next three days.
The Assembly is the highest level decision making body on the environment and this is the third convening of the body whose inaugural sitting was held in 2014.
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The focus of this year’s Assembly is pollution and more specifically Water Pollution, Land Pollution, Marine Pollution, Air Pollution, and Sound Management of Chemicals and Waste.
Pollution presents a major threat to health and wellbeing with roughly one in four deaths of children under five years of age, attributed to pollution.
Every year, by the UN Environment Programme’s estimation, seven million people die prematurely because of poor air quality with 1.8 billion people exposed to contaminated drinking water annually and 600,000 children develop intellectual disabilities every year because of exposure to lead.
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Previous Assembly’s have passed resolutions with regard to illegal trafficking of animals and their trophies; plastics among other environmental concerns.
