About Us

"Mobilising and Coordinating the International Response to Environmental Emergencies"

Who we are

The Joint UNEP/OCHA Environment Unit is a partnership between the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) that serves as the integrated United Nations emergency response mechanism to activate and provide international assistance to countries facing environmental emergencies.
The role of the Joint Unit is to rapidly mobilise and coordinate emergency assistance and response resources to countries facing environmental emergencies and natural disasters with significant environmental impacts. 

What we do

The Unit has a number of key functions that it undertakes to ensure timely and coordinated response to emergencies.

• Monitor - Continuous monitoring and ongoing communication with an international network of contacts and permanent monitoring of news services and web sites, for early notification of environmental occurrences.

• Notification - when disaster strikes, the Unit promptly alerts the international community and issues Information and Situation Reports to a comprehensive list of worldwide contacts.

• Brokerage - the Unit can quickly bring the affected country in direct contact with donor governments around the world who are ready and willing to assist and provide needed response resources.

• Information Clearing House - the Unit serves as an effective focal point to ensure available information on chemicals, maps and satellite images from donor sources and institutions is channeled directly to the relevant authority in the affected country.

• Mobilisation of Assistance - the Unit is able to mobilise multilateral assistance from the international donor community when requested by countries affected by environmental emergencies or natural disasters with significant environmental implications.

• Assessment - the Unit can arrange for the urgent dispatch of international experts to assess the impacts of an emergency and to make impartial and independent recommendations about response, clean-up, remediation and rehabilitation.

• Financial Assistance - the Unit can, in certain circumstances, release OCHA Emergency Cash Grants to meet immediate emergency response needs.