The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) is an international institution and the leading global authority on the environment within the United Nations system, headquartered in Nairobi, Kenya. It was established by the UN General Assembly in December 1972, following the 1972 UN Conference on the Human Environment in Stockholm, to coordinate global environmental efforts and address the growing concern over pollution. UNEP's core mandate is to provide leadership, deliver science, and develop solutions to the "triple planetary crisis": the crisis of climate change, the crisis of nature and biodiversity loss, and the crisis of pollution and waste.
UNEP works by driving transformational change through seven interlinked subprogrammes, including Climate Action, Nature Action, and Chemicals and Pollution Action, supported by foundational areas like Science-Policy and Environmental Governance. Its key mechanism is hosting the United Nations Environment Assembly (UNEA), the world's highest-level decision-making body on the environment, with universal membership of all 193 UN Member States. UNEP also develops international environmental agreements, publishes scientific reports like the Emissions Gap Report, and helps national governments achieve environmental targets.
UNEP is closely connected to several major international agreements and institutions, as it hosts the secretariats for Multilateral Environmental Agreements (MEAs) such as the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), the Minamata Convention on Mercury, and the Basel, Rotterdam and Stockholm Conventions. It also co-established the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) with the World Meteorological Organization in 1988 and is an Implementing Agency for the Global Environment Facility (GEF). A recent change is the focus articulated in its Medium-Term Strategy for 2026–2029, which emphasizes an integrated delivery model to accelerate country-driven, science-based solutions to the triple planetary crisis. The organization was also briefly referred to as UN Environment from 2017 to 2020.