World Health Organization (WHO)
www.who.int
HQ: Geneva, Switzerland
Focal Point: Marina Maiero, Megha Rathi
Internal Sustainability Team: 7 staff volunteering to contribute to the proposal of Carbon Neutral WHO Roadmap by 2030
Starting from 2022, WHO is committed to involve regional and country offices in data collection and will base its future total estimates on the actual data rather than the proxies.
Starting from 2022, WHO is committed to involve regional and country offices in data collection and will base its future total estimates on the actual data rather than the proxies.
DIRECTOR-GENERAL'S MESSAGE
“Climate change is the biggest global health threat of the 21st century, and we can no longer sleepwalk through this unfolding emergency.”
Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director-General
MISSION
The World Health Organization (WHO) is the directing and coordinating authority for health within the United Nations system. It is responsible for providing leadership on global health matters, shaping the health research agenda, setting norms and standards, articulating evidence-based policy options, providing technical support to countries and monitoring and assessing health trends.
ALIGNMENT WITH THE STRATEGY FOR SUSTAINABILITY MANAGEMENT IN THE UNITED NATIONS SYSTEM, 2020–2030
WHO has put forward several initiatives in order to align with the UN 2020-2030 Strategy for sustainability management, including those in the five environmental impact areas and within the six management function:
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Procurement: WHO has an environmentally friendly procurement policy in place that will be strengthened further.
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Human Resources: The staff association has been working closely with the human resources on the green initiatives. It has been considering a special policy on teleworking. When it comes to catering, it has been promoting vegetarian food and local food in the cafeteria.
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Facilities: WHO headquarters’ new building will be climate friendly by 2024.
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Travel: WHO Global travel policy has certain provisions to embrace environmental considerations
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Events: WHO is planning paper and plastic free events, along with more video conferencing with the opening of the new meeting facilities in the new building.
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ICT: Specific measures have been adopted around conferences and virtual meetings, e.g. use of electronic registration, online documents, participation and digital signage to reduce paper consumption; virtual meetings and web streaming to make meetings more accessible and reduce travel
EMISSIONS REDUCTION
The COVID-19 crisis has triggered a radical change in our way of working, travel and the setup of meetings and conferences.
WHO emissions have continued to be lower than in previous years, due to the continued travel restrictions and the new ways of working (work from home, digital / hybrid conferences).
Even before the COVID pandemic, WHO has been advancing video conferencing in lieu of travel and promoting use of train/road when applicable: for instance, rail travel at HQ level had doubled in 2019 compared to 2018, and consequent investments have been made on the audio-visual side in all the meeting rooms with interpretation capacity, to enable meetings with virtual participants, to take place with the 6 official languages. This has enabled WHO to hold the 73rd and 74th World Health Assemblies (in 2020, 2021) as virtual events. In 2020 the World Health Assembly was the first event of this scale within the UN system to be held virtually.
EMS AND REDUCTION EFFORTS
WHO has its own Environmental Management Procedures (EMP) for its internal environmental due diligence practices, and is actively promoting energy efficient practices. A broader action plan for environmental sustainability is under discussion.
The new WHO HQ building that is currently under construction was conceived with sustainable energy production at its core and will be climate friendly by 2024.
WHO is also exploring a possible policy (including targets) for reducing air travel.
Each year, as part of the Greening the Blue Report on Environmental Governance, each participating UN entity’s progress on the development of an Environmental Management System (EMS) is evaluated according to the UN system’s EMS criteria (these criteria are available on the Methodology webpage). Upon this evaluation the entity is then rated Exceeds, Meets, Approaches, or No response. For the 2022 reporting year, WHO’s progress on the EMS is rated as: Does not meet.
ENVIRONMENTAL & SOCIAL SAFEGUARDS AND STANDARDS IN POLICIES, PROJECTS AND PROGRAMMES
WHO is in the process of developing its Environmental and Social Safeguards. It has its internal Environmental Management Procedures which have been implemented at project level since 2010 and are now being updated as part of the new Environmental and Social Safeguards Framework.
WHO is implementing environmental and social safeguards and standards in its policies.
ENVIRONMENTAL TRAINING FOR PERSONNEL
WHO sustainability team has publicised and promoted the voluntary taking of the Greening the Blue Tutorial (Stick and Bean) for staff and other personnel.
WHO is providing training on environmental sustainability to its staff on a voluntary basis.
ENVIRONMENTAL INVENTORY APPROACH
WHO has continued to expand its data collection scope to cover its global air travel, facilities and vehicle fleet, which has been reported for the first time in 2021 and is also global in scope.
The methodology for facility emissions has been improved compared to previous years. While still majority proxy based, estimations are made at country level according to number of personnel.
Moving forward WHO is developing an approach to systematically measure and collect the emissions from its facilities across all WHO premisses.
Further, WHO has extended its inventory to include optional emissions from procurement, manly from freight forwarders.
WASTE MANAGEMENT
WHO systematically measures and reports the waste it produces. The organization has one of the best indicators on waste management among UN entities - 99% of the waste that is produced at HQ is recycled, reused or composted.
WATER AND WASTEWATER MANAGEMENT
WHO systematically measures and reports its water usage and has reached significant success in sustainable water management –water usage at HQ has been reduced almost 7-fold from 2017 to 2018.
OTHER ENVIRONMENTAL MEASURES
WHO’s corporate monitoring system (the General Programme of Work) is aligned with the SDGs and incorporates indicators and targets on environmental aspects (incl. clean fuel, air pollution, climate-sensitive diseases).
WHO Procurement works on the basis of sustainability principles and has a strong team advancing the development of sustainability criteria and standards along with other sister UN agencies.
Additionally, WHO has an active organisation wide Green Group that promotes and shares best practices across offices on individual actions that can be taken by personnel to facilitate a more sustainable WHO (e.g., personal commute, food choices etc.)
In 2021, “Going Green for Health” was one of the two main topics of the LEAD Innovation Challenge - an internal call to action for the WHO workforce to bring up innovative ideas on facing the climate change challenges of the 21st century and beyond. Staff from across WHO proposed solutions on how the current operational practices can be transformed to decrease the organization’s environmental and carbon footprint while promoting a healthy and green recovery post-COVID. In close cooperation with the winning team, WHO is developing a comprehensive global roadmap for sustainability management.
NEXT STEPS
WHO is planning to continue to move forward on its corporate strategy to pursue carbon neutrality and sustainable procurement as well as improve its emission data collection process.
ADDITIONAL LINKS
For more information visit our different webpages:
- Sustainability practices at WHO
- Climate Change and Health
- Health and Energy Platform of Action (HEPA)
- Air Pollution
Renewable energy solution for the WHO HQ new campus - 28 Oct 2021