UN Environment’s Chief of Staff First Official Mission to Beijing

Beijing, June 23 2017: UN Environment China team hosted a town hall meeting to welcome Chief of Staff Ms. Anne Le More on her first official mission to Beijing. The meeting was chaired by Mr. Shigang Zhang, Country Coordinator, UN Environment, China and witnessed the participation of more than 30 colleagues.

In his opening remarks, Mr. Zhang said “Chief of Staff’s visit will help us understand the global priorities of UN Environment leadership and also help set the strategic direction of our work”.

Ms. Anne Le More lauded UNEP-IEMP’s achievements and stated that given China’s important role in the sustainable development discourse, it will continue leading the efforts in steering the UN Environment-China collaboration.

She highlighted several priorities of UN Environment based on the vision of the Executive Director Mr. Erik Sohleim, namely: climate change, biodiversity, ecosystem management, green economy, livelihoods, oceans, environment nexus with security and health.

She further mentioned that South-South Cooperation and Belt and Road Initiative is also among the top priorities of UN Environment leadership.

Emphasizing on Executive Director’s directives, she said that we should collectively strive to make research more relevant and insightful; communicate better through advocacy to influence governments, private sector, policy-makers; strengthen partnerships with relevant stakeholders which will help us make a positive impact in people’s lives.

Prof. Linxiu Zhang, Co-Director, UNEP-IEMP provided an overview of Centre’s milestones, governance structure and introduced the future plans under the recently launched flagship programme on ‘Climate, Ecosystems, Livelihoods’ (CEL). It included developing a business model and a roadmap; building strategic partnerships with relevant stakeholders; forging public and private sectors; developing a wider portfolio of projects, supported by national and international funding programmes.

She also thanked the UN Environment leadership’s unstinted support in the past years and expressed confidence that UNEP-IEMP will continue receiving regular guidance and support for its future endeavors, particularly under the framework of CEL and other South-South Cooperation activities.

23 June 2018|