In December 2008, the United Nations University Institute for Environment and Human Security (UNU-EHS) celebrated the fifth anniversary of its establishment in Bonn, Germany, with the publication of the report Five Years: UNU in Bonn (which can be downloaded as a PDF file. This publication looks back at the growth and accomplishments of UNU-EHS in its first five years. It also covers the activities of the UNU Vice Rectorate in Europe (UNU-ViE) and two hosted entities — the UN Water Decade Programme on Capacity Development (UNW-DPC) and the secretariat of the International Human Dimension Programme (UNU-IHDP) — which joined UNU-EHS on the Bonn UN Campus in 2007.

Humankind today is vulnerable to such urgent challenges as changing climate, shortages of food and fresh water, regional conflicts, and environmentally induced population migration and unemployment. UNU-EHS, which was established in December 2003 and became fully operational in September 2004, explores problems and promotes solutions related to the environmental dimension of human security, particularly research in vulnerability assessment and migration.

The institute:

• studies the forces and processes of environmental degradation;
• explores the links between hazard events and creeping processes such as climate change and land degradation, and their influence on the magnitude and frequency of natural hazards, subsequent disasters and migration;
• contributes to the development, testing and verification of vulnerability indicators; and
• investigates the relationships between risk, vulnerability, and coping capacity to devise protective and reactive strategies and measures for affected communities.

Within this thematic scope, UNU-EHS creates new, policy-relevant knowledge through its own research and project work and through collaborations with relevant international and regional organizations, scientific and educational institutions worldwide.