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To celebrate the collaborative nature
of past, current and future efforts in dealing with
environmental emergencies, the United Nations
Environment Programme (UNEP) and the United Nations
Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA)
on Earth Day launched 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 as well as lessons that have
been learned from the past 15 years of responding to
international environmental emergencies around the
world, from Mexico to Rwanda to East Timor.
Partnership
“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 other complex
emergencies.
Inextricably linked
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 long term issues –
something to be dealt with later – without considering
the way that 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
has become 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.
Humanitarian responses
The case studies showcase various
humanitarian responses to environmental emergencies. The
recent earthquake in Haiti clearly demonstrated the need
for both a coordinated approach and cooperation between
UN agencies and other organizations in their response
and transition to an early recovery.
A roundtable discussion took place in
Geneva today in support of 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.
Swisslatin (23.04.10) |
