The Poverty-Environment Initiative jointly supports the implementation of full country level mainstreaming programmes in 24 countries – nine countries in Africa (Benin, Burkina Faso, Kenya, Malawi, Mali, Mauritania, Mozambique, Rwanda and Tanzania); eight countries in Asia-Pacific (Bangladesh, Bhutan, Indonesia, Lao Peoples’ Democratic Republic, Mongolia, Myanmar, Nepal and the Philippines); three countries in Europe and the Commonwealth of Independent States (Armenia, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan); and four countries in Latin America and the Caribbean (Dominican Republic, Guatemala, Paraguay and Peru) – with the aim of increasing the capacity of governments to mainstream environment into national development processes and their implementation. The Poverty-Environment Initiative also provides technical advisory services to Botswana, Thailand and a range of UN and non-UN development partners.

To support the country programmes four regional teams have been established in Nairobi (serving Africa), Bangkok (Asia-Pacific), Geneva (Europe and the Commonwealth of Independent States) and Panama (Latin America and the Caribbean). The regional team’s function is to provide strategic direction to the country programs; provide support to governments and UN Development Programme country offices to facilitate implementation of the Poverty-Environment Initiative, and promote poverty-environment partnerships for the sharing of knowledge and lessons learnt from the different countries in the programme. The support is provided through the regional structures of UN Development Programme and UN Environment.  The Poverty-Environment Facility in Nairobi in turn provides support and guidance to the Poverty-Environment Initiative regional teams.

While each regional team has adapted their strategy to the regional context they reflect the global Poverty-Environment Initiative scale-up outputs aiming to contribute to:

• Pro-poor environmental outcomes being mainstreamed into development policies, plans and budgets, making them more inclusive and pro-poor, gender responsive and environmentally sustainable
• National and regional institutional capacity and coordination systems are strengthened to implement, monitor and report on pro-poor, gender responsive sustainable development policies and plans
• Pro-poor environmental outcomes are integrated into regional and global institutions and sustainable development debates