Environment

Public Documents

Introduction

Disasters and conflicts, as well as relief and recovery operations, impact the environment in ways that threaten human life, health, livelihoods and security. Failure to address these risks can undermine the relief process, causing additional loss of life, displacement, aid dependency and increased vulnerability. Disaster managers and humanitarian workers can take action to avoid this.
The attached materials provide the necessary guidance on how to do so.

Online Resource Centre on Mainstreaming Environment into Humanitarian Action

The environment is an important cross-cutting issue within the humanitarian coordination mechanism and there is growing awareness amongst the humanitarian community of the need to integrate the environment into programmes and operations. However, many logisticians, programme managers, humanitarian coordinators, policy and decision makers in the UN and non-governmental organizations simply lack the capacity to ensure environmental mainstreaming. In response, the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) has developed an online Resource Centre on Mainstreaming Environment into Humanitarian Action to make existing guidelines, tools, training, and other resources regarding environment, humanitarian action and early recovery easily accessible. Its aim is to equip humanitarian practitioners with the skills and knowledge to better mainstream the environment into different sectors and cross-cutting issues.

Visit the Resource Center at:

http://postconflict.unep.ch/humanitarianaction/purpose.html

UNEP welcomes contributions of resources in any language from NGOs, governments, UN agencies, private sector and academic and research institutions as well as feedback via email at postconflict@unep.org to make the resource centre as useful and relevant as possible for a wide range of humanitarian personnel.

Contact:

Tom Delrue

Programme Officer

Humanitarian Action - Early Recovery

Tel: +41 22 917 8705

tom.delrue@unep.org