UNEP - Great Apes Survival Project

GRASP is one of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) initiatives to save a specific endangered species or a certain group of species. In April 2000 during the CITES Conference of the Parties (COP) at the UNEP Headquarters in Nairobi, it was put to Dr. Klaus Toepfer, the current Executive Director of UNEP, that a UN Special Envoy for Great Apes might succeed in raising awareness of the great ape problem. Dr. Toepfer immediately saw the potential of such a plan and thus launched the Great Apes survival Project in May 2001. UNESCO soon after joined UNEP to form a joint secretariat. Subsequently in July 2001, the UNEP Special Envoys for Great Apes were appointed. These were Dr. Russell Mittermeier, the President of Conservation International, Dr. Jane Goodall, the pioneering chimpanzee expert, conservationist and founder of the Jane Goodall Institutes; Dr. Toshisada Nishida, Japan's globally renowned primatologist and founder of the GRASP Japan Committee; Dr. Richard Leakey, the celebrated Kenyan authority on wildlife conservation and Prof. Richard Wrangham , a Professor of Anthropology, Harvard University . The UNEP Special Envoys have since become GRASP Patrons to better stress their role. Since its inception, GRASP has worked to bring together a diversity of stakeholders to address the crisis facing the great apes and their habitat. Through high level technical visits, field projects and National Great Ape Survival Plan (NGASP) policy making workshops in African and Southeast Asian great ape range states, as well as political lobbying and awareness raising in donor countries, GRASP has made a strong case for the value it adds to great ape conservation efforts.

UNEP worked closely with UNESCO from the inception of GRASP, recognising the important role that the World Heritage Conventions and the Biosphere reserves play in great ape conservation. UNEP was delighted when UNESCO agreed to join UNEP to create a joint secretariat of GRASP.