Natural resources


SC/15047

The international community must take steps to address the consequences of the recent leaks in the Nord Stream pipelines, while its causes are being investigated, Navid Hanif, Assistant Secretary-General for Economic Development at the Department of Economic and Social Affairs, told the Security Council today, in a meeting requested by the Russian Federation to discuss the incidents.

SC/14634

On 30 July 2021, the Security Council Committee established pursuant to resolution 1533 (2004) concerning the Democratic Republic of the Congo held informal consultations on “DRC-mined gold, tantalum and tungsten: illicit trading in DRC and internationally”.  The Committee received briefings by the Group of Experts, the Special Envoy of the Secretary-General for the Great Lakes Region, the Executive Secretary of the International Conference on the Great Lakes Region and the Head of Due Diligence in the Centre of Responsible Business Conduct of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).

More than 3 billion people globally are at risk of disease because the quality of their rivers, lakes and groundwater is unknown due to a lack of data, the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) said today.  UNEP’s survey of over 75,000 bodies of water in 89 countries found more than 40 per cent severely polluted.

SG/SM/14679-NR/231-REC/249
The following is UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s message to the meeting of parties to the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) Convention on the Protection and Use of Transboundary Watercourses and International Lakes, as delivered by Andrey Vasilyev, Deputy Executive Secretary of the UNECE, in Rome, to be held between 28 and 30 November: