Sustainable development and climate
The promotion of social progress and an improved standard of living as a precondition for the maintenance of international peace and security constitutes one of the central purposes of the UN Charter.
Today the UN work with social and economic development for poverty reduction, also include an environmental and climate perspective - sustainable development. The UN work for sustainable development consists of three dimensions: Environmental sustainability, social sustainability and economic sustainability.
Consequently, a vast majority of the United Nations' resources are devoted to raising the standards of living, promoting full employment and economic and social progress.
Sustainable development by topic
Development cooperation
UNDP - United Nations Development Programme is the central UN fund for development cooperation.
Allocation of resources
UNDP is funded by voluntary contributions. The contributions are linking and coordinating the development programs between host countries and the United Nations organization.
Key entities working to support Sustainable Development and Climate Action
Regional economic cooperation and development
The Regional Economic Commissions of the United Nations play an important role in the economic development and strengthening of economic relations in their regions. The five Regional Economic Commissions under ECOSOC are:
- ECA - Economic Commission for Africa
- ECE - Economic Commission for Europe
- ECLAC - Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean
- ESCAP - Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific
- ESCWA - Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia
More on UN, sustainable development and climate
- ECOSOC. Background information and documentation.
- UN DESA promotes the social, economic and environmental dimensions of sustainable development.
- UNDP, Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, which includes a set of 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to end poverty, fight inequality and injustice, and tackle climate change by 2030.
- The World Bank Atlas of Sustainable Development Goals.
- Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and Beyond 2015. A gateway to the UN system's work with the MDGs.
Key UN documents
- UN Charter in Swedish | in English
- UN System Chart
- Yearbook of the United Nations
- Universal Declaration of Human Rights in Swedish | in English
- Vienna Declaration and Programme of Action
- Statue of the International Court of Justice
UN documents and publications in catalogues and databases
- United Nations Digital Library. UN official documents and open access publications, UN maps, UN voting data and speeches.
- UN iLibrary. UN publications online covering different topics.
- ODS. UN documents published from 1993 onward and scanned documents published between 1946 and 1993 in the official languages of the UN.
- Daily list of documents (ODS). Documents published for the day, with full text links, can be found in the United Nations full text database ODS.
- UNBIS Thesaurus is a multilingual database of the controlled vocabulary used to describe UN documents.
- Index to proceedings is an annual bibliographic guide to the proceedings and documentation of the major UN organs. The index includes:
- a list of all documents
- a comprehensive subject index
- an index to speeches
- a voting chart of resolutions
- United Nations Documents Index (in United Nations Digital Library). References to all documents by subject area are published. A collection of indexes is held by the Dag Hammarskjöld and Law Library, Uppsala, Sweden and the UN Library in New York and the UN library in Geneva.