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Introduction
At the October 2007 meeting of the UN System Chief Executives Board for Coordination (CEB), the Executive Heads of UN agencies, funds and programmes committed to move their respective organizations towards climate neutrality. In particular, they agreed to:
- Estimate the greenhouse gas emissions of UN system organizations consistent with accepted international standards;
- Undertake efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions;
- Analyze the cost implications and explore budgetary modalities of purchasing carbon offsets to eventually reach climate neutrality.
To follow up on this initiative the Director-General issued Circular No 369 (Series 10) of 28.09.2007. The Circular aimed at making ILO staff more aware of the need to prevent the waste of energy and other resources and to promote environmentally sound operations. It included a number of suggestions for measures that could be taken, individually and collectively.
The Circular also established a Task Force on energy savings and environmental measures in ILO workplaces that was subsequently mandated to draft an ILO environmental strategy. This strategy is currently under consideration by Senior Management.
Role of FACILITIES
When FACILITIES was established in 2010 it was given the specific mandate of greening the Office. In this context it plays a lead role in developing and implementing initiatives aimed at making ILO offices worldwide more environmentally friendly. The department is also ensuring that special attention is paid to environmental issues in the renovation of the ILO headquarters building.
The department actively participates in the UN system-wide initiatives to achieve climate neutrality that are coordinated by UNEP. This includes the coordination of the ILO contribution to the annual inventory on greenhouse gas emissions published by the UN and its agencies and programmes. It also includes providing inputs to the work of the Environmental Management Group that was established by the Un System Chief Executives Board for Coordination (CEB).
ILO garden: differentiated maintenance - (pdf 144kB)
Results of inventories
Greening the blue
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