Engaged in the promotion of sustainable development in 166 countries, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) shows that it also promotes environmental improvement within its own system. For the first time, it conducted the "Most Green UNDP Country Office Contest", in which twenty offices competed, and announced the winners in early 2004. "A greener UNDP is in our best interests, and helps us demonstrate to our partners that we practice what we preach", said UNDP Administrator Mark Malloch Brown.

The joint winners were the country offices in India and Pakistan, which received $5,000 each for their successful greening initiatives. The seven-member jury at UN Headquarters in New York, including UN staff and a representative from the non-governmental organization Natural Resources Defense Council, noted favourably that both offices had greening initiatives in place the longest, for more than two years. They praised their solid attempts to link greening with cost savings and the high degree of sustained support from senior management and staff. They commended the Indian office for its efforts in setting up low-cost composting and rainwater collection, and emphasizing incentives for improving staff-awareness. In recognizing the Pakistan office, they highlighted that it had achieved a 20 per-cent reduction in paper use between 2002 and 2003, and pointed out the publication of its monthly internal newsletter "Green Piece". Pakistan plans to use the award money towards organizing a "Greening Week", while India hopes to set up an annual greening contest among its units.

Mr. Malloch Brown, in congratulating the winners, said: "I look forward to an increased emphasis on internal greening in the future by all our country offices as well as at Headquarters. I also encourage offices to leverage matching funds for the awards they received in order to maximize the impact of this initiatives." The India and Azerbaijan offices already had plans to do so.

The country offices that participated in the contest were located in Africa, Asia, Eastern Europe and Latin America, and received an award of at least $500 each, their reward for demonstrating that this was an important priority for them and to reinforce their environmental efforts.

UNDP plans to continue with a second greening contest, building upon the experiences and knowledge gained from the first round. "We hope that this will serve as an encouragement to all our offices to think hard about how to green themselves and to make it a priority for this year", said UNDP officer Satish Vangal who organized the competition. The winning offices are asked to help write up their experiences in order to provide useful background material for others wishing to follow in their footsteps.

For more information, please contact Satish Vangal at satish.vangal@undp.org