Annual Review 2019

The United Nations Environment Programme World Conservation Monitoring Centre (UNEP-WCMC) is a vital part of UNEP’s efforts to demonstrate leadership for the environment. Our long-standing collaboration with UNEP-WCMC has been key to supporting our work on biodiversity at global and national levels for decades, and 2019 was no exception.

Whether supporting countries to implement their commitments under various Multilateral Environmental Agreements or providing the information that shapes public and private sector decision-making, UNEP-WCMC sits at the heart of the science-policy interface on biodiversity.

As we seek to push for an ambitious, inclusive and measurable post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework that will fundamentally re-set our relationship with nature, UNEP-WCMC's support to these processes underway will be critical.

In the last year, UNEP-WCMC has strengthened engagement across the regions, including with EU institutions and the Government of China, and worked with over 100 countries and territories.

These deeper international partnerships, underpinned by the UNEP-WCMC collaboration, expand the reach and range of our work. Whether on nature-based solutions, ecosystem restoration, or assessing the impact of trade on species and products, we continue to give decision makers across the world the tools they need to make a positive impact for people and planet. Thank you to the Board of Trustees, our supporters and our staff.

UNEP-WCMC has made great progress in the last year with our partners to advance on the sustainability agenda. Across the 6 key areas of our strategy, there are many examples where our teams at the Centre have delivered huge impact. We have also established a more robust approach to understanding our impact at global, regional and national scales around the world.

The biodiversity community has been making much of 2020 being a “Super Year for Nature”. Despite – and in many ways also because of the challenges faced by the global coronavirus pandemic, 2020 certainly is a super important year for nature. It is the year and start of the decade in which we need to reshape and rebalance the relationship between people and nature. Building on the Centre’s 40 years of experience, UNEP-WCMC's work will be at the heart of this transformation.

The future of nature hangs in the balance; never in its history has UNEP-WCMC been more essential. We understand the power of collaboration and work with partners across the world to create innovative solutions to environmental challenges. In 2019 we brought together governments, businesses, NGOs and research bodies to tackle some of the biggest drivers of environmental degradation.

One such partnership – the Trade Hub – began in 2019 and is exploring how certain global trade pathways in agricultural commodities are causing biodiversity loss. The results are already feeding into public policy while equipping companies with the knowledge they need to transition to more sustainable business models.