(UN Agency)
(1) Overview of activities
UNEP’s mission is to lead the world in setting the environmental agenda and promoting the environmental dimension of sustainable development within the United Nations system. This mandate has been reaffirmed and strengthened over the past five years by the UNEP Governing Council, the Global Ministerial Environment Forum and the United Nations General Assembly. The United Nations has repeatedly acknowledged that environmental considerations are central to sustainable development, and this has been fully reflected the Millennium Development Goal Number 7 – Ensure Environmental Sustainability.
To achieve this goal, UNEP focuses on providing support to countries in three key areas, namely early warning and environmental assessment, environmental policy and law development, and capacity building for environmental governance. Within these areas, UNEP works to provide technical assistance and information on best practice, as well as to coordinate stakeholders, raise awareness and mobilize financial resources. While UNEP works within the UN system to ensure environmental issues are integrated within humanitarian response and development efforts, it also works through intergovernmental and nongovernmental organizations and with the scientific community to achieve these goals.
In the field of disaster management, UNEP’s mission is to address the immediate and long-term environmental impacts of natural and human-induced disasters, and to minimize the resulting environmental emergencies that they cause. UNEP’s approach is to reduce vulnerability and enhance coping-mechanisms through capacity building for disaster reduction, and activities in the field of disaster early warning, disaster prevention and preparedness, emergency response mechanisms, post-disaster and post-conflict assessment, and environmental rehabilitation.
Learn more about UNEP.
(2) Role in emergency relief and reconstruction
Working in close cooperation with OCHA, and the UN humanitarian response framework, UNEP’s role is to identify the urgent environmental risks caused by a disaster or complex emergency (like disaster waste, i.e.), to assess the environment impacts, to identify short and medium term needs, and to mobilize risk reduction and environmental rehabilitation activities.
Following the relief phase, UNEP works to ensure that the environmental dimension of the event is integrated within the recovery and reconstruction process, and that lessons are learned in terms of reducing future vulnerability and promoting sustainable development, especially promoting the local uptake of disaster prevention and preparedness measures by the impacted communities.
(3) Major opportunities for business support
The following resources are required to support UNEP’s emergency preparedness, response and reconstructions activities:
> Financial contribution (preferred)
> In-kind contributions of expertise in the fields of environmental assessment, environmental remediation, chemical contamination, water quality, institutional assessment
In-kind contributions of sampling equipment, laboratory analyses for detection of contaminants, in-country transport
(4) Contribution/Contact information
Pasi Rinne, Chairman, UNEP Asian Tsunami Disaster Task Force
E-mail: pasi.rinne@unep.ch
Tel: +41 22 918 8617
For donations and contact information, visit http://www.unep.org/ .
(5) Examples of engagement with the private sector
> During the response to the Indian Ocean Tsunami, UNEP worked in close cooperation with UNOSAT and the private sector in terms of obtaining and analyzing satellite images of impacted areas.
> During UNEP’s work in post-conflict environmental response, partnerships have been established with a number of laboratories and universities to provide technical experts and laboratory analyses.
> During UNEP’s work in post-conflict environmental clean-up, numerous partnerships have been established for environmental risk reduction and remediation activities.
> The UNEP APELL programme engages the private sector in a multi-stakeholder process of community awareness and emergency preparedness in highly industrialized areas where there is a potential for environmental emergencies resulting from an industrial accident (i.e. release of a toxic material, fire, explosion, etc.). This can be seen in the PETROBRAS/TRANSPETRO terminal in Sao Sebastiao, Brazil, in DOW Chemicals in Bahia Blanca, Argentina, in Ma Tha Put Industrial Estate in Thailand and in many other industrial sites.
> UNEP works with representatives of the private sector, in particular tour operators and leading hotels such as ACCOR, in terms of promoting sustainable tourism. In terms of the Indian Ocean Tsunami, relief in tourism destinations has been one of the priorities of the Governments of Thailand, Sri Lanka and the Maldives. The World Tourism Organization, the UN specialized agency in tourism, has taken the lead in coordinating communication and recovery of these destinations. UNEP will aim to provide environmental advice and expertise to the reconstruction of tourism destinations once the emergency phase has been addressed.
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