1 February 2012
UNEP Preparing Draft Medium-Term Strategy
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The draft Medium-Term Strategy intends to guide the work of UNEP over four years.

UNEP30 January 2012: The UN Environment Programme (UNEP) has circulated a draft of its Medium-Term Strategy (MTS) 2014-2017 to organizations accredited to UNEP. The MTS is intended to guide the work of UNEP for the four-year period and provide a framework for measuring progress, achievements and results.

Following a round of comments from UNEP-accredited organizations on the zero-draft, additional comments are expected to be solicited in mid-February. In its final form, the Governing Council requested UNEP to prepare, for its 27th session (February 2013), the Medium-Term Strategy (MTS) for 2014–2017 with a vision, objectives, priorities, impact measures and a mechanism for review by Governments as well as a results-oriented and streamlined Programme of Work (PoW) and budget for 2014–2015.

The zero-draft indicates that major themes of the global environment include: new challenges for ensuring food safety and security; climate change mitigation and adaptation; new insights on water-land interactions; integrating biodiversity across the ecological and economic agendas; the need for new approaches to minimizing risks of novel technologies and chemicals; accelerating the implementation of environmentally-friendly renewable energy systems; as well as the cross-cutting issues of aligning governance to the challenges of global sustainability, meeting global environmental challenges and a moving towards a green economy, reconnecting science and policy, and catalyzing change in human behavior for the environment. The zero-draft identifies the following areas for UNEP’s strategic focus for the next MTS period: Climate Change; Disasters and Conflicts; Ecosystem Management; Environmental Governance; Chemicals and Waste; Resource Efficiency; and Environment under Review. [IISD RS Sources]

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