This summary of UNEP's activities in 2008 provides an overview of the organization's contribution to the fight against climate change in a year in which unequivocal evidence established that global warming is the defining challenge of our era. The report also looks at the broad range of other activities carried out by UNEP as it follows its mandate to provide environmental leadership and promote sustainable development.

This summary of UNEP's activities in 2007 provides an overview of the organization's contribution to the fight against climate change in a year in which unequivocal evidence established that global warming is the defining challenge of our era. The report also looks at the broad range of other activities carried out by UNEP as it follows its mandate to provide environmental leadership and promote sustainable development.

The Arctic is particularly affected by climate change; over the past few decades, temperatures in this area have risen twice as fast as the mean global rate. The most prominent effect of global climate change in the region is the melting sea ice in the Arctic Ocean, which enables a multitude of ocean uses to be initiated and extended, such as shipping, fishing and oil and gas extraction. Unlike in the Antarctic, there is currently no single comprehensive legal regime for governance of the Arctic. Instead, the region is regulated by a patchwork of international treaties, above all the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), various regional and sub-regional agreements, national laws and soft-law agreements. This treatise provides an evaluation of the governance regime that regulates the use of the Arctic marine environment and its readiness to protect these fragile ecosystems in light of the consequences of climate change.

The Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) is widely regarded as one of the Kyoto Protocol’s best creations and as an essential part of the international climate change regime. The CDM has been constantly evolving to ensure that it fulfils its objectives of mitigating climate change and contributing to sustainable development in developing countries. The over 6,000 registered projects under the CDM are estimated to have generated almost US$200 billion of investment in developing countries and are expected to achieve GHG emission reductions of about 6.8 billion tonnes. Nevertheless, the CDM is not perfect, and one of its main problems is the inequitable geographic distribution of projects among developing countries. Understandably, this is a problem that countries are very keen to address, and since 2001, even before the first project was registered, countries have been highlighting the need to ensure that projects are equitably distributed among participating countries. This book looks at distributive justice under the CDM regime and focuses on the issue of equity in the geographic distribution of CDM projects among developing countries. The book investigates relevant aspects of international law to identify the legal characteristics of equitable distribution or distributive justice, in order to establish what equitable distribution in the CDM should look like. Based on these investigations, Tomilola Akanle Eni-Ibukun breaks new ground in defining equitable distribution under the CDM and exploring how key obstructions to the equitable distribution of projects may be overcome. The book will be of particular interest to academics and policymakers of climate change and the CDM within international law.