Partnerships and Networks

Establishing and maintaining effective partnerships and networks to keep the world environmental situation under review underpins the work programme of DEWA and is consistent with UNEP’s role as a catalytic organisation by mobilising institutional cooperation at the relevant level. The multidisciplinary nature of environmental issues and themes coupled with the fragmentation of data and information across different institutional custodians, makes it imperative to have structures in place to harness the best available scientific data to support scientific assessment and early warning, and report on the state of the environment from global down to local level.

On the communications side, the dissemination of policy-relevant assessment findings to policy-makers enables effective policies to be formulated in response to pressing environmental concerns. In addition, the provision of access to environmental information facilitates sound decision-making at the relevant level by a broad spectrum of stakeholders ranging from governmental officials to the ordinary citizen.

Partnerships are normally agreed between UNEP and one or more organisations that have a well-defined stakeholder interest in the delivery of UNEP’s programme of work. A framework Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) or Letter of Agreement (LOA) is usually signed by UNEP and the other partner(s).

Such an MOU or LOA describes the agreed areas of cooperation and there is no transfer of funds (see example of ECOLEX partnership agreement) . Under a framework MOU, it is common to have contractual MOUs defining specific tasks to be accomplished with a given time frame and budget. In such cases, funds are transferred to the partner.

UNEP has either established or been part of a number of partnerships in support of its early warning and assessment programme. These partnerships are quite diverse and cover such issues as geographic information systems, environmental information sharing, the production of the GEO series of reports, electronic communications tools and environmental terminology

Networks tend to be broader than partnerships in that many more institutions are engaged in the working relationship. Again, the network members share a common objective and tend to collaborate on an in-kind basis to derive mutual benefits form the working relationship.

For example, by exchanging information about what the members of the network are doing, some network members may decide to collaborate more intensively. In some cases a common Terms of Reference, may define the structure, purpose and activities of the network or the responsibilities of the national focal point (assuming that the network needs a national focal point). Guidelines are provided on the selection and placement of the national focal point (see GEMS Water, for example).

Over the past three decades UNEP has spawned a number of environmental information networking activities, namely ENRIN, GEO, GRID, Infoterra and lately the Africa Environmental Information Network (AEIN), that have stakeholder involvement at the global, regional, sub-regional and national levels. All of these networks deal with some aspect of environmental data and information from collection and management through to access, exchange and dissemination, though not necessarily in all countries. Although having different points of departures, these initiatives have, over the years, evolved into a situation where they are, to some extent, overlapping in terms of activities; working with different institutional partners in the same country; and sometimes working with different people within the same institution.

Collectively, these disparate networks had a somewhat piece-meal, and not fully coordinated, approach towards addressing a wide range of national level data and information problems that have a significant impact on the quality of delivery of the assessment programme of work. In general, a number of national level networking issues led to UNEP proposing a new networking model to the Governing Council/Global Ministerial Environment Forum in 2005 as a major component of the Environment Watch system.

The Environment Watch system will be a coherent, flexible and distributed system for keeping the environment under review. It is based on partnership between national environmental authorities and other stakeholders active in the field. Those partnerships will ensure that the system builds on existing networks, assessments and capacity-building initiatives. The system will mobilize experts and information from scientific programmes and global observing systems. It will interact with many decision-making forums, such as the conferences of parties to multilateral environmental agreements and their subsidiary bodies, regional ministerial forums and Governments.

Networking structures for environmental knowledge in support of the Environment Watch framework are being revitalised based on experiences derived from existing networking activities and looking towards a restructured approach in partnership with Governments and other stakeholders.