From the newest UN agency - UN Women - The 2011 Progress of the World's Women: In Pursuit of Justice report is a survey of women's legal rights and access to justice worldwide. In examining legislation and its implementation, the agency finds that despite expansion of women's legal rights in recent years, real progress on equality and justice has been elusive. Details of the report include which countries have passed special legislation on women's political rights, economic opportunities, and reproductive health and rights. It looks at which countries have laws against domestic violence, sexual harassment, and marital rape. It also provides data on development indicators related to women, and looks country-by-country at women's participation in politics.
The UN Environment Programme, in conjunction with the Frankfurt School of Finance and Bloomberg New Enerby Finance, issued its latest annual report on renewable energy investment trends: Global Trends in Renewable Energy Investment 2011. It shows a 32% increase in green energy investments worldwide - a total of US$211 billion in renewables, or about one-third more than the US$160 billion invested in 2009, and a 540 percent rise since 2004. Developing economies overtook developed ones for the first time in new investment on utility scale projects, with China being the world leader at US$48.9 billion of new investment. Another significant development was the growth of government research and development 120 percent to over US$5 billion worldwide. Additional drops in costs for solar, wind and other renewable technologies are expected, the report says, presenting a growing threat to the dominance of fossil-fuel generation sources in the next few years.
While in the United States, according to the latest issue of the Monthly Energy Review by the U.S. Energy Information Administration, domestic production of renewable energy is now greater than that of nuclear power. During the first quarter of 2011, energy production from renewable energy sources in 2011 was 5.65 percent more than that from nuclear power, which has remained largely unchanged in recent years. Production of renewable energy has increased by 15.07 percent compared to the first quarter of 2010.
Also from the UN, the Department of Economic and Social Affiars of the United Nation published its World Economic and Social Survey 2011: The Great Green Transformation which "calls for a complete transformation of technology on which human economic activity is based" in order to combat poverty while protecting the environment:
The "great green technological transformation" that the Survey champions will have to be completed in the next 30 to 40 years, that is, twice as fast as it took to accomplish previous major technological transitions. Because of the limited time frame, Governments will need to play a much more active and stimulating role to accelerate the green energy transformation. The Survey details new policy directions and major investments in developing and scaling up clean energy technologies, sustainable farming and forestry techniques, climate proofing of infrastructure and reducing non-bio-degradable waste production.
