At UNEP, our 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.
From flagship global GEF programmes to full-sized projects, medium-sized projects and enabling activities, UNEP works across all Global Environment Facility focal areas, with dedicated GEF technical teams in Biodiversity, Capacity Development, Climate Change Adaptation, Climate Change Mitigation, Chemicals & Waste, International Waters and Land Degradation.
Each focal area is supported by our programmes in complementary areas and backed by our team of over 1,000 in-house experts, who work with a worldwide network of partners to build the public momentum and institutional foundations for change, while developing, testing and sharing innovative, data-driven solutions to environmental challenges.
Technical Expertise
As a science-based organisation with 50 years’ experience leading the global environmental agenda, UNEP combines cutting-edge environmental research capacity with deep expertise in policy development, institutional strengthening and advocacy to ensure our partners on GEF projects achieve measurable impacts and sustainable change.
Our GEF teams are made up of world-class topic experts, who leverage expertise from across UNEP’s subprogrammes in Climate Action, Nature Action, Chemicals and Pollution Action, Science-Policy, Environmental Governance, Finance and Economic Transformations, and Digital Transformations.
Multilateral Environmental Agreements
As the peak environmental body of the United Nations, UNEP plays a leading role in the international environmental governance system and currently hosts 11 Multilateral Environmental Agreements (including three of the five MEAS for which the GEF is the financial mechanism) and six Regional Seas Conventions.
This integration uniquely positions UNEP to deliver GEF initiatives in support of the MEAs, including a wide range of enabling activities in support of environmental monitoring and reporting to meet national commitments to Multilateral Environmental Agreements.
Knowledge and innovation
With a mandate to keep the global environment under review, a core part of UNEP’s role is to provide the world community with improved access to meaningful environmental data and information, and to help increase the capacity of governments to use environmental information for decision making and action planning for sustainable human development.
From producing regular landmark reports on the state of the global environment, including the Global Environment Outlook, Emissions Gap Report, and Adaptation Gap Report, to undertaking national and regional research on ecosystem health and advising on environmental policy and planning, UNEP is one of the most authoritative voices on our environment.
In additional to hosting specialised research institutes and centres of excellence, such as the UNEP World Conservation Monitoring Centre (Cambridge, UK) and the UNEP International Environmental Technology Centre (Osaka, Japan), UNEP is a founding partner in a range of GEF-supported knowledge platforms, including IW:LEARN and SAICM.
