Precipitation has increased over land at high latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere, especially during the cold season. Decrease in precipitation occurred in steps after the 1960s over the subtropics and the tropics from Africa to Indonesia.

Emissions of carbon dioxide due to changes in land use mainly come from the cutting down of forests and instead using the land for agriculture or built-up areas, urbanisation, roads etc. When large areas of rain forests are cut down, the land often turns into less productive grasslands with considerably less capacity of storing CO2.

The projection of future climate change depends partly on the assumptions made about future emissions of greenhouse gases and aerosol precursors and the proportion of emissions remaining in the atmosphere.

Map showing the locations of refugee camps and environmental 'hot spots' visited by the UNEP assessment mission in 2000 when investigating the environmental effects and concerns after the armed conflicts in the region.

Some 11 countries in Europe (Western, Central Europe and the Balkans) are affected by anti-personnel mines. Several Balkan countries are severely affected as a result of the recent armed conflicts. However, the long-term legacy of anti-personnel mine contamination is also apparent in this region, where some countries are still removing anti-personnel mines laid during the Second World War.

The graphic shows the number of refugees in each district of Albania, based on statistics from May of 1999. Albania borders on Greece, Macedonia, Serbia and Montenegro. The refugees crossed the border from Kosovo into Albania due to the humanitarian crisis of Serb aggresion towards ethnic Albanians living in Kosovo.

Since the fall of the Iron Curtain, ethnic tension has been a major factor in the development of the political situation in the Balkan Region. The break up of communist Yugoslavia lead to wide spread confict in the 1990-ies and has lead to the formation of new countries.

Shows the concentration of refugees within Macedonia and the locations of refugee centers and camps. The refugee influx put significant stress on Macedonia's weak social infrastructure. With the help of NATO and the international community, Macedonia ultimately was able to accommodate the influx.

Shows the population density of the Central Asian region. The Central Asia region mainly consists of the five Central Asian republics - Kazakhstan, Kyrgyz Republic, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan.

The graphic maps out the areas that are at risk, or already contaminated from nuclear industry after the break-up of the former Soviet Union. Nuclear power has unresolved problems of waste disposal. Waste remains dangerous for thousands of human generations and can be converted to plutonium, a component of nuclear weapons. The mining of nuclear fuel, containing U-235 and U-238, can pollute groundwater with both heavy metals and traces of radioact...

Water pollution in Albania is recorded on different levels; moderately polluted, organically polluted, and industrially polluted for rivers, lakes and sea areas. This map shows the areas of water pollution throughout Albania.

Shows various levels of water quality in the major rivers of Macedonia. If we analyze natural conditions in the country, we shall conclude that Macedonia is a semi-dry area (the area of Ovce Pole is the driest one in the Balkan Region), so the quantity of available water is of particular importance.

A map of Macedonia showing all the protected areas, national parks natural reserves. The industry sector is the main polluter in Macedonia. The primary reasons for industrial pollution are the old, inefficient technologies, inadequate control of waste, and insufficient equipment for environment protection. The most serious problems in the country are the quality of air in Veles, Bitola, and Skopje; the pollution of surface waters (as a result o...

The graphic shows the number of physicians per 100 000 inhabitants in Europe. As the World Health Organization, which compiled this data, notes, 'Estimates of health personnel are extremely difficult to obtain.'

The map shows the administrative regions (oblasts), territories, national districts and republics of Russia. Russia has a total population of well over 143 million people. It has wide natural resources, including major deposits of oil, natural gas, coal, strategic minerals, and timber.It also faces formidable obstacles of climate, terrain, and distance hinder exploitation of natural resources. Major envionmental issues are air pollution from heav...

In 2000, the world had 6.1 billion human inhabitants. This number could rise to more than 9 billion in the next 50 years. For the last 50 years, world population multiplied more rapidly than ever before, and more rapidly than it will ever grow in the future.

The grapic shows all the sites the UNEP Task Force visited in Macedonia. Macedonia is part of the Balkans, bordering on Albania, Bulgaria, former Yugoslavia, Serbia and Greece. The graphic is part of the balkan task force' goal to provide and review information on potential and real environmental impacts, as well as those on human settlements, stemming from the ongoing conflict in the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (FRY) and neighbouring countrie...

All the states that emerged from the break-up of Yugoslavia are still fragile, except Slovenia, which joined the EU in 2004, and Croatia, which is well on the way towards European integration. There have been nearly 800,000 people who have left the former Yugoslavia since 1991.

The graphic shows the watershed area of the Bor and Timok rivers, and the areas potentially affected by pollution.The southeast Serbian municipality of Bor is paying a high price for the century-old industrial exploitation of its copper resources. The citizens and the municipality of Bor have recently embarked on a participatory process in order to identify and tackle their most threatening environmental problems.

The environmental legacy associated with extraction industries is all too familiar. Badly operated or abandoned mining sites have already caused severe pollution, some with impacts spilling across national boundaries: heavy metal spills from Baia Borsa tailings in Romania; the cyanide spill from Baia Mare in Romania; heavy metal spills from Sasa tailings in Macedonia; and various releases at Majdanpek and Veliki Majdan in Serbia, and Mojkovac in ...