The World Conservation Monitoring Center or UNEP-WCMC (by its English acronym) is a branch of the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) based in Cambridge (United Kingdom). It has been part of UNEP since 2000, and is responsible for evaluating biodiversity and providing support for the formulation and implementation of policies on the subject.At the time of its creation in 1988, the Center was an independent organization managed jointly by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature, UNEP and the World Wide Fund for Nature, before which it formed part of the IUCN Secretariat. Work areas

The activities of UNEP-WCMC include the assessment of biological diversity, support for international conventions such as the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES); the management of spatial and non-spatial data (and training in the subject) on species and habitats relevant to conservation. The mandate of the UNEP-WCMC Center is to facilitate the application of the global indicators for the 2010 Biodiversity Target on the rate of biodiversity loss, and together with the CITES Secretariat, prepare a series of reports and baselines data. It also manages, in collaboration with the World Commission on Protected Areas of IUCN, the global database on protected areas. Through the University of California Press, UNEP-WCMC has published a series of global atlases on issues related to biological diversity. The UNEP-WCMC Center consists of multiple Programs for different areas of conservation: bioinformatics, trade and biological diversity; climate change; ecosystem assessment; food security, biomass and biological diversity; decisions and support in maritime matters; protected areas; and species.

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