United Nations Environment Organization - UNEP's Failure As An Anchor Institution

UNEP's Failure As An Anchor Institution

The UNEP was created to perform the tasks of an anchor institution in the system of Global Environmental Governance (GEG). According to the Nairobi Declaration on the Role and Mandate of the United Nations Environmental program, “the role of UNEP was to be the leading global environmental authority that sets the global environmental agenda, promotes the coherent implementation of the Environmental dimension of sustainable development within the UN system, and serves as an authoritative advocate for the global environment”. Maria Ivanova, Director of the Global Environmental Governance Project at the Yale Center for Environmental Law and Policy, writes in a working paper entitled Assessing UNEP as Anchor Institution for the Global Environment: Lessons for the UNEO Debate that “anchor institutions are the primary, though not the only, international organizations in certain global issue areas and typically perform three core functions: 1) overseeing monitoring, assessment, and reporting on the state of the issue in their purview; 2) setting an agenda for action and advancing standards, policies, and guidelines; and 3) developing institutional capacity to address existing and emerging problems.” However, while the UNEP was chartered to perform these three primary tasks, it has failed in many ways: