Articles tagged as United Nations | Smithsonian Magazine

Kofi Annan, the seventh secretary-general of the United Nations, passed away this weekend.

The Ghanian diplomat, who died this past weekend, reshaped the mission of the U.N. during a lifelong career as a civil servant

August 20, 2018

Part of the Danevirk wall surrounding Hedeby

The trading center of Hedeby and its surrounding wall are considered one of the most significant Viking sites in Northern Europe

July 2, 2018

An oil drilling moratorium, development restrictions and fishing reform has helped the 200-mile-reef come off Unesco’s endangered world heritage sites list

June 28, 2018

Fully 73 percent of the patents studied in the paper pertained to microbial species, which account for about 20 percent of marine life.

New Research

Nearly Half the Patents on Marine Genes Belong to Just One Company

Who owns biodiversity? No one and everyone—or maybe, a German chemical company

June 13, 2018

The king has declared it will use its pre-colonial Swazi name from now on

April 26, 2018

International waters face threats from overfishing, mining, pollution and climate change and the new treaty may help preserve marine biodiversity

December 26, 2017

The last time Earth experienced such high levels of CO2 was three to five million years ago

World Meteorological Organization reports that current atmospheric CO2 concentrations are at their highest level in 800,000 years

October 30, 2017

Among the newly protected creatures are lions, chimpanzees, giraffes and whale sharks

October 30, 2017

Cambodia's Angkor Wat, one of more than 1,000 world heritage sites designated by UNESCO

U.S. Pulls Out of Unesco for the Second Time

Citing bias against Israel, the U.S. breaks ties with UN agency it helped found

October 12, 2017

Beatrice Fihn, Executive Director of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), poses at the headquarters of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), in Geneva, Switzerland.

The grassroots coalition spearheaded a U.N. treaty to outlaw nuclear arms and hopes to make them taboo, like chemical weapons

October 6, 2017