UN Vienna Tour

We got another great tour guide for the Vienna UN Center!  He had the same dry sense of humor that several of our other guides have had (although he was Belgian, not Austrian). Ex:  he was talking about how the buildings were made in the 1970s and “built with asbestos, which gives people cancer, which is a big no, no.” So they renovated and took it out.  

The UN in Vienna hosts the CTBTO (Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty Org), IAEA, UNODC (Office on Drugs and Crime), UN Outer Space Agency, and UNIDO.  

The building itself is the first UN building to be carbon neutral.  All electricity is through renewables, and we saw a chart on the wall showing reduced water use for the past four years for the building.  I also saw a lot of plants in the halls to refresh the air.  The recent rennovations have motion sensors and when a room is unoccupied the AC is shut off.  He referenced a new document called “the Lazy Person’s Guide to Saving the World”, which included a full range of activities that could be adopted to make a small difference.  This included not replacing cell phones every year, go to SGDSinAction.com and download the app to learn more..

 The Vienna complex was built in the 1970s during the cold war, as a middle ground between East and West.  It was designed so that every office would have a window.   

 There are not nearly as many conferences in Vienna as there are in Geneva.  The largest conference space only holds 300.  Much of the technical work requires smaller meetings between fewer people. 

As with all UN buildings, there are tons of artistic gifts from different countries.  One of my favorites was this stone sculpture that represented the empowerment of women.  The cutout of the woman is actually larger than the cut away in the stone, indicating how she came into her full being when set free.

The UN Outerspace Agency is also in Vienna.  The Outer Space Agreement is approaching its 50th anniversary and it's time to close some loopholes in it.  For example, treaties only apply to countries and now that space exploration is becoming privatized, they need to update the treaty with regards to who can stake ownership claims to asteroids and other bodies (states are forbidden to do this, but companies are not).  The guide talked about the investment return on money for Outerspace research and said for every $1 invested, there is a $7 return in new tech developments.

We learned a lot about some of the more technical advances to radiology, including that it can be used to modify seeds to be more drought resistant, but in a non-GMO way, and it can be used to sterilize male tsetse flies, which are then released en masse in regions where sleeping sickness is a problem, making it harder for females to reproduce, and thus bringing down the population of the flies and preventing disease.

The building itself is the first UN building to be carbon neutral.  All electricity is through renewables, and we saw a chart on the wall showing reduced water use for the past four years for the building.  I also saw a lot of plants in the halls to refresh the air. The recent rennovations have motion sensors and when a room is unoccupied the AC is shut off.  He referenced a new document called “the Lazy Person’s Guide to Saving the World”, which included a full range of activities that could be adopted to make a small difference.  This included not replacing cell phones every year, go to SGDSinAction.com and download the app to learn more..