Environmental Emergencies: Publication Marks the 15th Anniversary of Productive UN Partnership

Geneva, 22 April 2010 - To celebrate the collaborative nature of past, current and future efforts to deal with environmental emergencies, the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) launched today, on Earth Day, a publication to mark the fifteenth anniversary of the Joint UNEP/OCHA Environment Unit.

Environmental Emergencies - Learning from Multilateral Response to Disasters highlights the successful partnerships and lessons learned from the past 15 years of responding to international environmental emergencies around the world, from Mexico to Rwanda to Timor-Leste.

"The web between humanitarian and environmental damage is intrinsically interconnected. Therefore, I was heartened when the Joint UNEP/OCHA Environment Unit was created to deal with environmental emergencies," Mikhail Gorbachev, Founding President of Green Cross International, stated in the book's foreword.

The Joint Unit was established as a partnership at the request of Member States in 1993 to respond to environmental emergencies caused by natural disasters, industrial accidents and complex emergencies.

The book notes that the humanitarian and environmental aspects of emergency response are inextricably linked. Nonetheless, for many years environmental issues have taken a back seat to the humanitarian response to emergencies. Responders tended to think of environmental problems as longer-term issues - something to be dealt with later - without considering the way the environment can have an immediate effect on people's lives. Keeping the environment on the agenda in the midst of an emergency is an important job that the world is gradually coming to recognize.

"In the face of global challenges such as climate change, it becomes all the more important to address environmental issues as essential parts of humanitarian response," Achim Steiner, Under-Secretary-General and Executive Director of UNEP, and John Holmes, Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator, declared in a joint foreword in the commemorative book.

The case studies showcase various humanitarian responses to environmental emergencies. The recent Haiti earthquake clearly demonstrated the need for a coordinated approach and cooperation between UN agencies and other organizations in response and transition to early recovery.

A roundtable discussion took place in Geneva today to support the launch, hosted by the Geneva Environment Network. The participants were Rudolph Mueller, Chief Emergency Services Branch, OCHA; Toni Frisch, Deputy Director-General, Head of Humanitarian Aid Department and Head of the Swiss Humanitarian Aid Unit in the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC); Alexander Likhotal, President of Green Cross International, and Muralee Thummarukudy, Programme Officer, UNEP Disasters and Conflicts Programme.

Notes to Editors:

United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA)

The mission of the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) is to mobilize and coordinate effective and principled humanitarian action in partnership with national and international actors

For further information, please call: OCHA-Geneva: Elisabeth Byrs, +41 22 917 2653, mobile +41 79 473 4570, byrs@un.org or UNEP-Geneva: Julie Marks, +41 22 917 8404, mobile +41 796 246 056

OCHA press releases are available at http://ochaonline.un.org or www.reliefweb.int