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Urban flooding is a serious and growing development challenge. Against the backdrop of demographic growth, urbanization trends and climate changes, the causes of floods are shifting and their impacts are accelerating. This large and evolving challenge means that far more needs to be done by policy makers to better understand and more effectively manage existing and future risks. This summary accompanies Cities and Flood: A Guide to Integrated Urban Flood Risk Management for the 21st Century which provides forward-looking operational guidance on how to manage the risk of floods in a transforming urban environment and changeable climate. The guide argues for a strategic approach to managing flood risk, in which appropriate measure are identified, assessed, selected and integrated in a process that both involves and informs the full range of stakeholders.

Proceedings from the joint workshop co-organized by: the World Bank, the United Nations International Strategy for Disaster Reduction, and the World Meteorological Organization - March 12, 2012

Inception Report on 'Data collection survey on reverse logistics in the Pacific Islands.'

2012 activity report in French of the IRD New Caledonia

2012 activity report in French of the IRD

This report was predicated by GEF programmatic mandate on the promotion of sound chemicals management, as well as observations on the global chemicals landscape that alert us to the enormity of the challenge of sounds chemical management. The Chemical Abstracts Service (CAS) states that there are 60 million registered organic and inorganic substances in the world. Of that, only a fraction have been tested and inventoried by chemicals oversight bodies. For example, the USEPA maintains an inventory of approximately 84,000 commercially important chemicals; and of those, a smaller fraction still have been tested for their toxicity, including the vast majority of those categorized as "high volume".

Invasive plants species (French) in New Caledonia and where to find them.

This National Report Format (NRF) has been approved by the Standing Committee in Decision SC41-24 for the Ramsar Convention's Contracting Parties to complete as their national reporting to the 11th meeting of the Conference of the Contracting Parties of the Convention (Bucharest, Romania, June 2012).

Local and indigenous communities across the world are advancing innovative sustainable development solutions that work for people and for nature. Few publications or case studies tell the full story of how such initiatives evolve, the breadth of their impacts, or how they change over time. Fewer still have undertaken to tell these stories with community practitioners themselves guiding the narrative.

Invasive plants seriously threaten native habitats throughout the Pacific region, including the Cook Islands, where numerous invasive weed species of agricultural concern are also present. Invasive species are a growing problem in the Pacific as global trade, travel and tourism bring increasing numbers of invasive species incursions, and troublesome species that are already present begin to naturalise and move out of lag phases. The number of weed (or potential weed) species present in the Cook Islands is already very large: according to the Cook Islands Biodiversity Database, some 333 naturalised flowering plants, gymnosperms and fern species already outnumber those species that are native to the Cook Islands (287 species).