Backing environmental multilateralism in complex times

My thanks for the opportunity to brief you on how UNEP is supporting Member States to tackle global environmental challenges through science, data and policy support in complex times. And these times are indeed complex. We are seeing shifting alignments. Rapid advances in Artificial Intelligence (AI) and other technologies.

Growing trade and investment frictions. Growing competition for critical resources – hydrocarbons, minerals, land and water – all with significant environmental and social implications. A rise in disasters and conflicts, which are increasing already intense pressures on the environment and human well-being.

The war in the Middle East makes this painfully clear. Amid this background, our resolve to address the world’s environmental crises must grow stronger. Because environmental damage and associated economic disruption ripple across borders and contribute to forced migration, displacement, food shortages and more.

You can be assured that UNEP’s resolve is stronger than ever. As the United Nations’ leading global authority on the environment, the organization is at the heart of action we must collectively take. Member States recognize this and indeed have shown their confidence in UNEP.

In December, at the seventh session of the United Nations Environment Assembly (UNEA-7) in Nairobi, Member States adopted UNEP’s forward-looking Medium-Term Strategy and handed down new mandates through 11 resolutions and three decisions, all of which will strengthen our support for environmental action.

These include some new and urgent issues around the sustainable use of AI, combatting wildfires, and addressing the conundrum of supplying critical energy transition minerals – which are required for energy access and transition, but also have implications for biodiversity and human rights, given the scale and speed at which these minerals are required.

Of course, these new mandates, added to our existing mandates, come during a time of funding challenges and UN reform through UN80. The UN80 reform initiative is critical for UNEP as we seek to work with the rest of the UN system in delivering on the environmental dimension of the Sustainable Development Goals more effectively, more coherently and with greater impact.

We at UNEP are deeply engaged in all three workstreams. I am pleased that some of our innovations – such as those on mandate development and the monitoring and reporting platform – are inspiring the broader UN system.

UNEP is playing a key role, together with the UNFCCC, by leading Work Package 27, which is “undertaking a thorough assessment of current arrangements” and will “make proposals on possible structural changes and programme realignments on environmental issues”. Over 20 UN agencies and Multilateral Environmental Agreements (MEAs) are participating in this work.

We approach this with a firm belief, based on science, that the environment undergirds the pillars of the UN Charter – be it peace and security, be it human rights, or be it economic and sustainable development.

And we then explore four interconnected issues – science, governance, coordination and implementation – that can strengthen the effectiveness and coherence of our work Area one, Science , is looking at how the evidence from science informs the relations between a healthy environment and the three pillars of the UN Charter and at enhancing coordination of environmental science across the UN system – crucial at a time when science is being challenged and selectively interpreted.

Area two, Governance , is looking to increase synergies among MEAs and elevate the role of the United Nations Environmental Assembly in the multilateral system as a convening platform for collective action for Member States, but also the UN system, MEAs and civil society.

Area three, Coordination , is seeking to reduce fragmentation and dispersion through mainstreaming interconnections between science-policy-action across the UN system, stren…