THE UNITED NATIONS ENVIRONMENT PROGRAMME

UNEP on the web: http://www.unep.org

The UN Environment Programme was established in 1974 as a follow-up to the first UN Conference on the Human Environment in 1972. It is based in Nairobi, Kenya. Due to its location and as a program of the UN General Assembly, developing countries are relatively influential and the program pays particular attention to Africa. UNEP's main functions are to promote international environmental co-operation and recommending policies to this end; provide policy guidance for the direction and co-ordination of environmental programmes in the UN system; review the world environment situation; and implement environmental programmes within the UN system. As a programme, UNEP cannot formally implement large projects and its financial resources are limited, particularly because it relies on largely voluntary contributions from governments, making UNEP dependent on their goodwill. However, it has, directly or indirectly, been the main force behind some of the most important legally binding agreements in the field of sustainable development. It also implements quite interesting, but underfunded programs in the field of cleaner production, consumption and biodiversity. It has a high-level meeting process in the form of a (now) annual meeting of Environmental Ministers, which has often formed the basis for negotiation processes on legally binding instruments. UNEP's list of achievements includes the initiation of negotiations on many major environmental conventions, such as the Vienna Convention for the Protection of the Ozone Layer, the Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer, the Basle Convention on the Control of Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes and Their Disposal, the Convention on Biological Diversity and the Convention on the Prior Informed Consent Procedure for Certain Hazardous Chemicals and Pesticides in International Trade (PIC Convention).

The upcoming WSSD puts the future of UNEP at stake. It is obvious that the existing environmental bodies of the UN with their current agendas will not be able to implement the agenda of sustainable development. The WSSD needs to discuss a possible strengthening of UNEP (starting with a reliable and independent funding mechanism) and the CSD alike that may lead to the constitution of a World Environmental Organisation.