Governments turn to the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) for guidance and solutions, and for support in building their capacity. UNEP helps countries integrate environmental sustainability into development and investment planning. Thanks to UNEP-support, many countries have stronger environmental institutions, better legal instruments, enhanced technical capacity, greater knowledge, greener investments and better cross-border collaboration.
By bringing people from governments, civil society, academia and the private sector together, UNEP encourages discussions and enable the sharing of ideas, technology, innovations and lessons learned.
Being a key partner of major environmental funds such as the Green Climate Fund (GCF), the Global Environment Facility (GEF), the Adaptation Fund, and the Multilateral Fund (Montreal Protocol) UNEP enables countries to access financing and programming through them and other bilateral or multilateral public sources.
UNEP is also appreciated for the free access to environmental information, for providing tools such as integrated environmental assessments, for enabling South-South and triangular cooperation, and for education and awareness-raising campaigns.
UNEP is engaged in numerous partnerships and initiatives with wide scope, including the Partnership for Action on Green Economy (PAGE), the Finance Initiative, the Global Peatlands Initiative, the Cool Coalition, the Poverty-Environment Initiative and subsequent Poverty-Environment Action, the UN Collaborative Programme on Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation in Developing Countries (UN-REDD), the Climate Technology Centre and Network, and the Global Partnership on Forest and Landscape Restoration.
One of UNEP's major achievements since its creation in 1972 has been the initiation, negotiation and implementation of a large number of multilateral environmental agreements, bringing together nations and the environmental community to tackle the challenges of our time. These global environmental agreements complement and guide national legislation and bilateral or regional agreements by forming the overarching international legal basis for global efforts to address particular environmental issues.
UNEP provides the secretariat for 15 multilateral environmental agreements. These conventions concern a wide range of environmental issues such as emissions, hazards of chemicals, protection of biodiversity, protection of endangered and migratory species, protection of oceans, protection of the ozone layer, and more. They enable countries to put in place sound and effective environmental policies and legislation. In addition, we provide programmatic support to several other conventions.
