Strengthening the United Nations

Abstract

This chapter traces the emergence of the environment as a distinct part of the United Nations' policy agenda and describes the institutional architecture of international environmental governance in a convoluted United Nations system. Against this background it discusses recurrent calls to strengthen the environmental mandate and the corresponding capacities of the United Nations at the nexus of environment and development and appraises corresponding outcomes of the 2012 United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development ("Rio+20"). This edition first published 2013 © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.