United Nations Environment Programme—Present and Future

Abstract

Environmental issues are posing a grave challenge to humanity since few decades now. In this regard, the role of United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), the international institution coordinating these concern has been an important subject of study. A number of studies since the very inception of UNEP, have tried to examine and reform its functioning to meet global challenges. The purpose of this paper is to review existing literature on this subject. It summarizes the views of different analysts who have devoted their study to an understanding of the nature, functions and shortcomings of UNEP. It further combines the recommendations suggested by them in order to strengthen UNEP or to replace it with UNEO. On having observed the arguments meticulously the paper synthesizes reform recommendation. It also tries to address the gap in existing literature that tends to be arbitrarily tilted towards the study of functions rather that structure of UNEP and makes recommendation for the same as well.