United Nations officers of Poverty-Environment Initiative joined with UN advocates and members of the research community to strategize on the sustainability of poverty-environment mainstreaming at the Initiative’s 2015 Global Retreat, held from 30 March to 1 April, in Nairobi.

Forty participants from the Initiative’s four regional offices (Africa, Asia Pacific, European and Commonwealth of Independent States, and Latin American and Caribbean), UN Capital Development Fund (UNCDF), UN Development Programme (UNDP), UN Environment Programme (UNEP), UN Women, and the Oxford Poverty & Human Development Initiative (OPHI), University of Oxford (UK) attended the 3-day meeting. The wide-ranging agenda of the meeting covered the Poverty-Environment Initiative (PEI) scale up evaluation, a draft sustainability strategy and draft communication strategy, SDGs implementation at country level, interregional exchanges and partnerships.

In their joint message to the team, Poverty-Environment Initiative co-Directors Ms. Anne Juepner and Ms. Isabelle Kempf said: “The meeting brought together 40 members of the Poverty-Environment Initiative team and gave us a chance to meet face-to-face and share valuable experiences from every region of the globe. The team-building components were complemented by strategic discussions on the sustainability of poverty-environment mainstreaming following the adoption of the SDGs, the deepening of interregional exchanges and partnerships, and the road ahead for the Initiative.”

“We reached hard sought agreements on monitoring and evaluation and explored new tools for measuring environmental sustainability and social inclusion in multidimensional poverty indices,” they continued. “We also celebrated the 10th anniversary of the PEI and the forthcoming publication of the new Handbook, Mainstreaming Environment and Climate for Poverty Reduction and Sustainable Development.”

“A very special thanks goes to the resource persons who helped prepare and lead the discussions, and to the Regional Teams that participated so actively throughout the meeting. We will shortly share the report of the Global Retreat, including a full set of action items, and will post the presentations as well as a photo gallery on the Poverty-Environment Initiative website. We look forward to continuing to work with all of you in a spirit of mutual admiration and support in the days ahead.”