About
Established in 1972, the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) is the voice for the environment within the United Nations system. Its mission is to provide leadership and encourage partnership in caring for the environment by inspiring, informing, and enabling nations and peoples to improve their quality of life without compromising that of future generations.
What UNEP does:
• Assesses global, regional and national environmental conditions and trends
• Develops international agreements and national environmental instruments
• Strengthens institutions for the wise management of the environment
• Integrates economic development and environmental protection
• Facilitates the transfer of knowledge and technology for sustainable development
• Encourages new partnerships and mindsets within civil society and the private sector
UNEP’s global headquarters are located in Nairobi, Kenya, where about one-third of the organization’s 1 000 staff live and work; the majority of employees are located around the world in more than 28 cities in 25 countries.
Good environmental housekeeping is a basic requirement for the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP). This requirement derives implicitly from its original mandate “to provide leadership and encourage partnership in caring for the environment” and explicitly from UNEP’s Governing Council Decision 18/10 on good environmental housekeeping which calls for “strategies for the promotion of best practice in environmental housekeeping for use by the United Nations Environment Programme at its headquarters and in its regional offices, and to advise and encourage the rest of the United Nations System to develop and apply similar strategies for continually improving their own environmental performance”, as well as Decision 23/8 on Sustainable procurement.UNEP cannot be credible in undertaking most of its work, without itself doing it—and thus leading by example.
The UN Secretary-General’s recently launched initiative ‘Greening the UN’ aims at minimizing the United Nation System's ecological footprint and ultimately to make it a climate-neutral organization. It provides new opportunities for UNEP to practice, to advise, and eventually to lead others on good environmental housekeeping practices, particularly with regard to reducing the carbon footprint.
The United Nations Environment Programme, UNEP, committed itself to become climate neutral from 1 January 2008. This will be achieved through reducing greenhouse gas emissions to the extent possible, and purchasing of offsets to compensate for the remaining emissions.
The preliminary UNEP climate neutral strategy (2007) stated several targets, including:
• To reduce the climate footprints of UNEP through adoption of sustainable management practices for its operations at HQ and in all regions
• To ‘lead by example’ and provide a basis for raising awareness of similar organizations, of governments and of the public as a whole
• To develop methods, procedures and approaches that could be used by others to achieve the same.
Furthermore, the strategy stated that UNEP will:
• Produce an initial GHG inventory for 2007 and comprehensive GHG inventory for 2008, to be externally verified and serve as baseline
• Identify main emission sources and adopt actions to address the GHG emission activities
• Engage the entire UN family in the work towards a climate neutral UN
• Develop capacity in UNEP to provide technical as well as policy advisory services to other organizations and entities wanting to ‘go green’ (e.g. the activities by DTIE and EMG)
• Update the initial strategy before the end of 2009
Strategy
UNEP is the leading agency for environmental issues within the UN family. We aim to lead by example and practice what we preach. Sustainability is the driving force for all the work that we do, and this also guides how we do it.
UNEP has been Climate Neutral since 1st January 2008. Our commitment is to reduce emissions to the greatest extent possible and to procure offsets to compensate for the remaining emissions. We are working hard to continuously improve our performance, by reducing our environmental footprint, improving our contribution to development and managing our finances ever more effectively and responsibly. Particular emphasis is given to minimizing our contribution to climate change.
Measuring our greenhouse gas emissions
UNEP started monitoring its greenhouse emissions in 2007. In 2008 total emissions were 11,582 tonnes of CO2-e, or 9.5 tonnes per UNEP staff member. Approximately 87% of these emissions result from air travel, the rest to office activities. More information about UNEP emissions can be found in ‘Moving towards a Climate Neutral UN’,. The report includes emissions data for all UN agencies as well as describing individual efforts to reduce emissions.
Climate neutral UNEP: reducing and offsetting
UNEP will soon be publishing a revised UNEP Climate Neutral Strategy. Examples of recent efforts to reduce emissions include:
• Activities in all 35 UNEP offices around the world to reduce the consumption of energy. Click here to read the report comparing UNEP offices.
• More sustainable approaches to meetings, as defined by the Green Meeting Guide. Follow this link to read it.
• The creation of an energy neutral Headquarters for UNEP: the new UNEP Headquarters building in Nairobi aims to produce as much energy as it uses through solar panels. Read the article that was published in Climate Action 2009. Click here to read the brochure that was send to UNEP member states and solar panel producers.
• Environmental considerations are incorporated into UNEP procurement procedures. To learn more on sustainable procurement click here. For guidelines on specific issues follow this link.
• The UN compound in Nairobi has seen a 50% reduction in waste going to landfill, thanks to a the Near Zero Waste recycling station.
• A programme to involve staff in achieving reductions and improving our environmental performance has been set up. It includes internal meetings with all our Divisions, development of an interactive website, workshops and creation of positive incentives such as an annual award for the best "green initiative" (starting 2010).
• Our remaining emissions for 2008 were being offset through procurement of Certified Emission Reductions from a CDM project in Nicaragua which was selected by the UNEP offset provider, Ecosecurities
Further information
• Find out more about UNEP’s efforts to support a more sustainable United Nations
• Read more about the UN’s Climate Neutral commitment and achievements to date
• UNEP is a participant of the Climate Neutral Network, CN Net.
Sustainable development: “Development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs” – Brundlandt Commission - 1987
Climate Neutral: living in a way which produces no net greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. This should be achieved by reducing GHG emissions as much as possible, and using carbon offsets to compensate for the remaining emissions. – Source: Kick the Habit, a UN Guide to Climate Neutrality