United Nations Environment Program

Topic Update!

Download the topic update (pdf)

United Nations Environmental Program (UNEP)
Grace Le
UNEP@bruinmun.org

 
Dear Delegates,

 
It is with great pleasure that I welcome you to BruinMUN 2011’s United Nations Environment Program. My name is Grace Le, and I, alongside my moderator Ashley Towers, will be your dias for this conference. Originally from Huntington Beach, California, I am a sophomore student at UCLA on my way to making my Grey’s Anatomy dreams come true as a Pre-Med Psychobiology Major. Aside from Model United Nations, I am also involved in Greek Life, as an active member of the Kappa Alpha Theta national sorority. Since freshman year of high school up until now, I have been extremely involved in MUN. This upcoming year, I will be the Director of Marketing for the program at UCLA and plan to travel as much as I can with the travel team. This program has seriously made an enormous impact on my life and I encourage all of you to stay in it as long as you can. Believe me, all of the hard work and late nights are worth it.

 
I hope you are as excited to be in this committee as I am to chair it. Get ready to lose yourself as you fight for the greater good of the planet under the alias of another country.
The United Nations Environment Program provides an outlet for you delegates to express ideas that may potentially extinguish all threats to our current lifestyle. Specifically, you will be tackling the two age-old issues of oil exploitation and loss of biodiversity. Not only are these two issues some of the fastest-growing problems today, they are topics that require immediate attention because of the risks they pose to our health and livelihood. Without oil, we cannot efficiently fuel our cars, our heaters, and basically all of the electricity that our lives depend on, but the extraction and use of oil can often prove to be more detrimental than beneficial. Since it is implausible to cease all usage of oil, the main issue at hand is what measures are taken to reduce these environmental damages. On the other hand, species diversity is just as significant. Without a key species in the web of biodiversity, the food chain will crumble and life will cease to exist on earth. It is, thus, the responsibility of the international community to prevent species extinction at all costs. With these two topics in mind, prepare to participate in impassioned debates reprimanding the ignorance of environmental accountability and launching comprehensive plans for the future.

 
It is my wish that you will all have a great experience (both intellectually and socially) at BruinMUN 2011. In order for this, you MUST come prepared by researching every relevant part of this issue as well as the policies of your country. You must also be open and willing to participate actively in committee. The more invested you are, the better/ more interesting committee will be to you. If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact me.

 
Good luck!

Grace Le
United Nations Environmental Program, Chair

 
Topics

Download Topic Synopsis! (pdf) Updated June 1. Document is password protected.

Topic A: Oil Exploitation
Oil, or in particular petroleum, plays a vital role in our everyday lives. Oil fuels ninety percent of transportation methods, as well as is utilized for food, fuel, heat transport, lubrication, painting, to make plastic, and to create other substances. But as essential as oil is to modern society, we must also be weary of the consequences of the methods in which are used to obtain this oil. Today, the top oil- producing countries are Russia, Saudi Arabia, the United States, Iran, China, Mexico, Canada, United Arab Emirates, Iraq, and Kuwait. The exploitation of oil has become a more urgent issue as the competition for petroleum intensifies.

The crippling effects of oil exploitation can be broken down into two categories: oil extraction and oil usage. Oil extraction disrupts natural environments such as the tundra, rainforests, and the ocean, and leads to massive oil spills. These oil spills are immensely damaging to the environment and may linger beneath the ocean for an extensive period of time. The oil may also engulf animals until it is too difficult for them to function. In this way, oil spills can significantly contribute to species extinction. Furthermore, oil extraction intensifies the danger of toxic waste because the extraction and processing of petroleum generates acid rain, releases toxins into the environment, and causes hydrological disruption. In addition to these hazards are the consequences of oil usage, which contributes to air pollution and global warming.

Should the demand for oil to power our lifestyles take prevalence over the maintenance of our environment and furthermore community health?

 
Topic B: Loss of Biodiversity
“Biodiversity is the variety of life on Earth. It includes all organisms, species, and populations; the genetic variation among these; and their complex assemblages of communities and ecosystems.” -UNEP

Because of human activity disturbing the natural cycle of life, species extinction rates have been higher than have ever been recorded in history. According to the International Union for Conservation of Nature, the rates are estimated to be about 1,000-10,000 times higher than what they should be. Loss of biodiversity is due to a number of causes, including habitat loss and destruction, changes to ecosystems, invasive alien species, over-exploitation, pollution and contamination, global climate change, and failure to maintain biodiversity conservation. The loss of biodiversity poses immediate threats to our livelihood. We will have less food for our survival, less clean water, less resources such as medicine made from plants in forests, and generally it will disrupt our health and livelihood. Continuation of this problem will have dire consequences in the future.

For committee, we want to focus primarily on species that perform vital functions that are rapidly reaching extinction. We need to determine ways that we can protect them and harvest new generations of the species. For instance, the UN has currently released articles expressing major concern about the sudden mass death of bees all over Europe and North America.

 
Contact Your Chair: UNEP@bruinmun.org