With the growth of multilateralism and the environmental movement, most countries are members of the international community and are contributing in some way to various processes, international institutions, legally binding agreements and other initiatives at a supra-national level. This section of the country profile aims to provide a snapshot of how the country’s environmental institutions are involved in the international environmental arena.

There are a large number of international organizations to which countries belong. These can be global like the UN family of organizations, regional such as the European Union (EU) or sub-regional such as the Southern Africa Development Community (SADC). Other affiliations also exist such as the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), which covers developed countries or the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation group, which covers Pacific-rim countries.

Governments are parties to various multilateral environmental agreements (MEAs), which can be viewed in the Treaties section of this part of the country profile. Once a treaty or protocol is signed or ratified, a national point of contact usually has to be designated. The national focal points for the major convention (MEAs) are also listed in this section of the profile.

With the growth of the environmental movement since the 1960s coupled with a corresponding increase in the number of international environmental organizations and multilateral agreements, governments are contributing to many different environmental funds. For example, UNEP is funded through a voluntary fund – the Environment Fund. However many other environmental funding mechanisms have been established for different reasons. Among them is, for example, the Global Environment Facility, which, inter alia, is the funding mechanism for the Convention on Biological Diversity and the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.

The Multilateral Fund for the Implementation of the Montreal Protocol has, as its main objective, to assist developing country parties to the Montreal Protocol whose annual per capita consumption and production of ozone depleting substances (ODS) is less than 0.3 kg to comply with the control measures of the Protocol. Contributions to the Multilateral Fund come from the industrialized countries, or non-Article 5 countries, and are assessed according to the UN scale of assessment.

Governments also contribute to various trust funds to solve specific environmental problems in countries or regions. Technical assistance may also be given on a multilateral or bilateral basis through counterpart funding mechanisms.