UNDP-UNEP Poverty-Environment Initiative (PEI)

Division of Regional Cooperation (DRC)
United Nations Environment Programme
UN Gigiri Compound, United Nations Avenue
P.O.Box 30552-00100, Nairobi, Kenya

Contact: John Horberry, Manager, UNPEI
Tel: +254 20 762 4903
Fax: +254 20 762 43 24
Email: john.horberry@unpei.org
Website: www.unpei.org

About the Poverty-Environment Initiative

The UNDP-UNEP Poverty Environment Initiative  is a joint programme to help countries develop their capacity to “mainstream” poverty-environment linkages into national development planning processes, such as PRSP’s and MDG Achievement Strategies. Based on experience and lessons learned over the past few years of assisting 9 countries in Africa and Asia to launch and sustain poverty-environment mainstreaming programmes, UNDP and UNEP have launched an effort to scale-up the PEI significantly and to work closely with key donors and other partners to expand the effort to other countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America. The aim is to strengthen UNDP-UNEP support capacity in the different regions and to launch an increased number of country programmes over the coming years.

About the Poverty-Environment Facility

In order to coordinate and support the scale-up of the PEI, UNDP and UNEP have decided to set up a joint Facility based in Nairobi.  This effectively makes the partnership between the two organisations operational. The role of the Facility will be to provide strategic direction for the PEI scale-up, to coordinate relations with the donors providing funds, to expand technical support and access to knowledge on poverty-environment mainstreaming to the UNDP-UNEP regional teams and the participating countries and to provide a hub for a range of partnerships.  The Facility was formally established in May 2007.

About Poverty-Environment Mainstreaming

Poverty-environment mainstreaming is defined as integrating poverty-environment linkages into national development planning processes for poverty reduction and pro-poor growth – such as  PRSPs, MDG or growth strategies.  It involves establishing the links between environment and poverty and identifying the policies and programmes to bring about better pro-poor environmental management.  It is targeted at influencing national plans, budget processes, sector strategies and local level implementation - reflecting the need to integrate the valuable contribution of environmental management to improved livelihoods, increased economic security and income opportunities for the poor which is largely overlooked in government policy making processes and in the wider debate about development priorities.