Evaluate UN budgets and programmes as an AI Secretary-General

Addressing climate- and environment-related risks to peace through joint UN analysis and action

UNEP will place the three challenges of climate change, biodiversity loss and pollution at the heart of its work, and tackle them through transformative multi-stakeholder actions that target their root causes and drivers. This Project Document describes an initiative designed to ensure delivery of UNEP support to crisis-affected regions in which environmental management is weakest, and where climate- and environment-related stresses pose additional risks to peace. In regions and countries affected by crisis, people are highly exposed to climate change; to the depletion of water, fertile land, and other natural resources; and to the environmental and health impacts of pollution. The poor, especially women and children, face increased vulnerability from environmental stresses that can, if unmanaged, result in migration, instability, and conflict. Contested borders and tense inter-state relationships impede transboundary natural resource-sharing and management. Governments frequently lack the capacity to plan and apply science-based approaches to address major environmental challenges. Instability impedes investment in technologies and methods that, in other contexts, are transforming natural resource management and facilitating sustainable consumption and production. Given these impediments to environmental protection, achieving the environmental SDGs in crisis-affected contexts is especially challenging; it requires additional, specialised support. Through establishing a UNEP team dedicated to delivery of environmental analysis and advisory services in crisis-affected regions, UNEP will work with UN partners to identify the root causes and drivers of environmental degradation, and address these drivers through leveraging “networked multilateralism” – bringing together the UN system (including Peace and Security architecture), regional organizations, International Financial Institutions and other key players. The team will work with partners, UNEP Divisions and Regional Offices to: i) Monitor, analyse and communicate key environmental trends and their implications for regional peace, stability and security (socio-economic change, migration patterns etc.), allowing UN entities to identify emerging tensions and understand underlying drivers or root causes relating to environmental degradation and scarcity of natural resources (including water, land, extractives); ii) Design politically-informed and gender-responsive environmental policy solutions and plans that can be implemented in politically complex or insecure contexts, working in close partnership with UN peace operations, Resident Coordinators, and other field-based partners; iii) Convene stakeholders to build consensus around identified policy and environmental governance measures, often providing technical support to UN partners with prevention and mediation mandates to enhance environmental governance and transboundary environmental cooperation; iv) Guide and support the implementation of programmes designed to address environmental risks to peace, and promote best-practice environmental management in insecure contexts. The team will support UNEP delivery at scale in crisis-affected regions, working through a collective interagency approach to ensure significant progress on the climate, nature and pollution agendas. In line with the Secretary-General’s prevention agenda, UNEP will support capacities for early warning and early action, increasing system-wide understanding of the interlinkages between climate change, natural resource extraction, security, and migration, for prevention and preparedness. The team will leverage UNEP’s strengths – notably its capacity to analyse environmental data, to deliver science-based environmental policy recommendations and programme design, and to bring a long-term perspective into the UN’s prevention work. The team will focus on facilitation, policy guidance and tailored knowledge transfer, leveraging opportunities provided by the UN reforms to enhance environmental sustainability in support of Member States. The team will be established in 2021, and will scale up in 2022-25 to ensure implementation of the Medium Term Strategy in crisis-affected regions, notably: i) West Africa, Central Africa and the Sahel; ii) the Middle East and North Africa, the Horn of Africa, and Central Asia (with scope for initiatives in other regions). The Team will build on existing UNEP initiatives, coordinating closely with colleagues and the Climate Security Mechanism. Advisors based in the regions will be supported by a small Headquarters-based team. They will draw on a flexible fund established to support environmental assessments, policy research, and scenario development based on scientific data, hydrological and climate modelling.