UMass Boston Faculty-student Delegation Participates in Historic UN Meeting in Nairobi

A new era in the world of environmental governance began on Monday, February 18 with the first ever universal session of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) Governing Council. Environment ministers, scientists, members of civil society, and other stakeholders convened at UNEP headquarters in Nairobi, Kenya to work through a new, post Rio+20 agenda. This meeting marks the first time that the Governing Council/Global Ministerial Environment Forum will meet with universal membership, following the reforms to strengthen UNEP that came out of the Rio+20 conference.

Prior to the June 2012 Rio+20 conference, only 58 members made up UNEP’s governing council. Post-conference reforms now allow participation from all 193 UN member states, strengthening UNEP’s status as a fully-representative platform for issues related to the global environment and sustainable development.

With the theme, “Rio+20: From Outcome to Implementation,” the goals of the meeting are to strengthen the interface between sound science and effective policy, to explore possibilities for new goals in sustainable development post-2015, and to implement a wide range of other policies elevated by the Rio+20 conference.

Representatives from the Center for Governance and Sustainability at UMass Boston’s John W. McCormack Graduate School of Policy and Global Studies are attending the meeting. A delegation comprised of Assistant Professor Maria Ivanova and graduate students Natalia Escobar-Pemberthy and Daniel Zaleznik is in Nairobi to conduct research and to film the newest documentary in the “Quest for Symphony” series.

Ivanova, co-director of the center and a faculty member in the Department of Conflict Resolution, Human Security, and Global Governance, is also speaking at the event.  Her lecture, “Innovations in Higher Education for Sustainability: Launch of Platform for Sustainable Performance in Education,” on February discusses the work faculty and students are undertaking at UMass Boston in collaboration with Addis Ababa University. Ivanova will speak alongside two environmental ministers: Ms. Khatuna Gogaladze, Minister of Environment Protection of Georgia and Mr. Keshab Man Shakya, Minister of Science, Technology and Environment in Nepal.

"We are the only faculty-student delegation from a major research university at this historic session of the UNEP Governing Council," Ivanova said. "UMass Boston is gaining increasing recognition as a hub for world-class governance and sustainability research that feeds directly into international policy processes."

In June 2012, Professor Ivanova and Natalia Escobar-Pemberthy participated at the Rio+20 conference as co-organizers of an event on climate change and sustainability in universities together with Yale University and Fundação Getulio Vargas.

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