Greening the Blue has been accompanying UN system efforts to reduce emissions and environmental impacts since the call of former Secretary-General of the United Nations Ban Ki-moon to “go green” in 2007. Under the leadership of Secretary-General António Guterres, the UN System Chief Executives Board for Coordination endorsed the Strategy for Sustainability Management in the United Nations system, 2020–2030 Phase I: Environmental sustainability in the area of management (Sustainability Strategy I).The Sustainability Strategy I recognizes the role of the UNEP hosted Sustainable United Nations facility (SUN) and of the Environmental Management Group in providing leadership, coordination and support to UN system entities.
Throughout these years and under the umbrella of Greening the Blue, the UN system has been taking actions to reduce environmental impacts from facilities and operations.
Data and analysis as well as the progress in the implementation of the Sustainability Strategy I are presented every year in the Greening the Blue Annual Report.
The Report is addressed to UN system personnel and informs actions and initiatives. Additionally, it is publicly communicated and made available to enhance the credibility, accountability and transparency of the UN system. Ultimately, through transparency and the sharing of good practices, the UN system aims to inspire other organizations to take actions and to improve environmental performance in their facilities and operations.
While the Report covers the whole UN system, information on the environmental performance of individual UN entities and good practices is available through the Greening the Blue website.
The Sustainable UN facility (SUN)
The UNEP Sustainable UN facility coordinates the Greening the Blue Community, which is composed of 220 focal points representing 60 UN system entities.
The role of SUN is to support UN entities to measure and communicate on their environmental performance, reduce their environmental impacts and compensate residual emissions.
SUN works with designated Focal Points from all UN system entities, providing technical assistance and capacity-building, as well as services to support knowledge-sharing and reporting.
SUN helps support the Focal Points in part by managing the Working Group on Environmental Sustainability Management (formerly Issue Management Group). The Working Group has established a harmonized, UN-wide approach to measuring the green house gas emissions from all UN entities, funds and programmes and shared emissions reduction plans and efforts.
