About Our Sponsors

Financial Support

UNEP expresses its gratitude to the Government of the Netherlands for financial support in establishing this pilot version of the Country Environmental Profile Information System.

The initiative was funded under the Partnership Agreement with the Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Affairs - Development Cooperation (http://www.minbuza.nl).

Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Affairs - Development Cooperation

This partnership agreement aims at strengthening developing countries' capacity to improve their environment and participate in the global and regional environmental cooperation. One specific objective is to strengthen national capacities for the development of national environmental information systems.

The Country Environmental Profile Information System networks key environmental institutions in each country as a first step to provide easy access via the Internet to a wide range of authoritative data and information covering environmental assessment, law, policy and management. Each profile functions as a basic national portal site on environmental matters and fosters institutional cooperation at the national level to further develop environmental information systems.

The Netherlands agreement covers Euro 12.3 million for the years 2002 - 2004 for the following thematic priority areas:

• Assessment
• Environmental Law
• Water
• Energy and Climate
• Urban Environment

In-kind Support

In addition to the financial sponsorship, a large number of institutions within various countries worldwide have provided an inestimable in-kind contribution to the country profile initiative by sourcing important data and information resources and by peer reviewing the content. Each individual country profile provides a link to the national environmental information network of contributors.

Furthermore, a number of international organizations, within the United Nations system and beyond, have provided a similar in-kind contribution by allowing UNEP to draw country-specific data and information from web resources under their management.

UNEP acknowledges with gratitude all support received for the Country Environmental Profile Information System.

Apart from a contribution from the United Nations Regular Budget, UNEP depends entirely on voluntary support. The Environment Fund is the main source of funding for UNEP's activities. However, contributions to the Environment Fund continue to fall short of the budget approved by UNEP's Governing Council, forcing UNEP to scale down its work programme. In addition to the Environment Fund, earmarked funding for specific UNEP activities is provided through Trust Funds and Earmarked contributions.

In order to strengthen strategic collaboration between UNEP and the Governments of donor countries, UNEP has recently initiated development of Partnership or framework Agreements with selected countries. The principal aim of such Agreements is to streamline and consolidate funding to UNEP priority activities within the programme approved by the Governing Council. Agreements result in more predictable and stable funding and enable UNEP to better plan ahead while reducing time and resources spent on administration.

UNEP has already developed partnership agreements of different types with Norway (Minister of International Development, Ministry of Foreign Affairs), Belgium (Minister of Development Cooperation), Ireland (Ireland Aid), and the Netherlands (Ministry of Foreign Affairs-Development Cooperation.