Joint UN-OSCE initiative for security and environment

Joint forces to better manage natural resources

Many factors in our natural environment can be at the root of tensions between peoples, particularly where capacities for peace - both economic and social - are lacking. The Environment and Security (ENVSEC) Initiative considers that co-operation towards a sustainable and equitable management of natural resources can help to strengthen social cohesion and forge bridges across cultural and political boundaries, which in turn helps reduce vulnerability to crises.

"More and more we see that people become vulnerable to environmental change. Not everyone can cope with this, and many are very strongly affected by this", says Marcin Swiecicki, the Co-ordinator of OSCE Economic and Environmental Activities.

"We have to do more to integrate environmental questions with other aspects of security - economic and social factors as well as political ones - if we want a more sustainable, equitable future".
 

Focusing on south-eastern Europe and Central Asia

The ENVSEC Initiative was launched in September 2002 by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) and the OSCE, to join forces and bring together the combined experiences of these international agencies. Its main goal is to identify environmental issues that have the potential to threaten security, and to develop activities that can tackle such issues in order to promote stability.

So far, the Initiative has produced two regional environmental security assessments, for south-eastern Europe and Central Asia. The initiative currently represents a total of nine countries in south-Eastern Europe (Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia and Montenegro, the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Bulgaria, Romania, Croatia, Greece, Albania, Hungary) and five in Central Asia (Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan).
 

Linking up for the second phase

On 21 May 2003, the second day of the 11th OSCE Economic Forum in Prague, a videolink will be established between the Forum and the "Environment for Europe" Ministerial Meeting in Kyiv, Ukraine. Both UN agencies involved in the ENVSEC Initiative - UNDP and UNEP - will present during this meeting the outcome of the Initiative's first phase and introduce its follow-up work programme.