For the United Nations to succeed in its purposes and to be a credible organization, it needs to account for its environmental impact, reducing risks and unintended negative impacts and maximizing benefits to people and their environment. Implementing environmental management systems (EMS) will provide UN agencies with a systematic and transparent tool to track and report on progress on environmental performance over time, whilst working towards the internalization of the environmental dimension of the Sustainable Development Goals in their management processes.

The purpose of the stocktaking exercise was to provide an overview of the current status of environmental management systems of different UN organizations, to make sure future activities in the Swedish EPA - UNEP partnership build on existing work, and to reach a better understanding of how to introduce EMSs to the UN system. Based on the findings made, the stocktaking exercise provides recommendations for improvements. It is for example recommended that certain core functions are managed on a common UN-wide basis – just as some are already today - to streamline and coordinate activities, and to avoid duplication of efforts and costs. This also brings the advantage of a coherent way of working in the spirit of the One UN reform.