Development Committee

UNEP

United Nations Environment Programme

About the Committee

The United Nations Environment Programme, established in 1972, is the primary international organization responsible for collaborating with governments, in order to tackle a wide range of different environmental challenges. Among UNEP’s main concerns are water, soil and air pollution; depletion of the ozone layer; biodiversity preservation; and the rise in global temperatures, owing to climate change. To combat these issues, UNEP creates initiatives that promote the sustainable usage of Earth’s natural resources, in alignment with the Sustainable Development Goals. Fulfilling this agenda, however, requires immense cooperation with other non-governmental organizations that aid the programme in its efforts to safeguard humanity against the impact of ecological disasters.

This year’s Koç JMUN is centred around the theme of “Rebuilding Institutional Credibility in a Time of Volatile Dissension”, and UNEP’s agenda items reflect this important mission. The committee will examine how environmental institutions can remain credible when the line between activism and extremism begins to blur, while working together to ensure that precious lands like the Gobi can recover from the effects of global warming. Both of these are major issues in which political and economic interests threaten, as two major ecological issues are affecting our modern world, where vested political and economic interests are damaging natural resources.

In this year’s Koç JMUN, UNEP will tackle two agenda items taken from major ecological issues of our contemporary world where meddling affairs of politics and economics spoil the earth's natural resources. Amid volatile dissension, UNEP must prove that environmental governance can be principled without becoming partisan. This committee will examine how environmental institutions remain credible when activism is cast as extremism and when arid lands, like the Gobi, demand patient recovery. It is vital that the delegates work towards shaping responses that protect legitimate advocacy and produce visible gains for affected communities.