The European Commission and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) have renewed their strategic partnership after signing an amendment to their Memorandum of Understanding.
The agreement was signed on October 27 by Jessika Roswall, the European Commissioner for Environment, Water Resilience and a Competitive Circular Economy, and Inger Andersen, UNEP’s Executive Director, the Commission informed on Monday.
Roswall declared that the EU was “grateful for UNEP’s invaluable science-based input to policy-making” and looked forward to “deepening” the partnership.
The Commission said the renewed partnership reaffirmed a shared commitment to science-based policymaking, strengthened “environmental multilateralism” — international cooperation between countries — and collective action on what it called the “triple planetary crisis” of climate change, biodiversity loss and pollution and waste.
Focus areas for the renewed cooperation
Cooperation will be structured around three thematic pillars: climate action; ecosystems across land, ocean and freshwater; and scaling up a circular economy and “pollution-free value chains”, the Commission said.
Andersen noted that the partnership reflected a shared determination to strengthen “science-based environmental governance” and support the implementation of global commitments on climate, land and biodiversity loss and pollution.
She also described the European Commission’s “significant financial support” for environmental multilateralism as “invaluable.”
