A/RES/53/187 Page 2 Having considered the report of the Governing Council of the United Nations Environment Programme on its fifth special session,4 1. Welcomes the report of the Governing Council of the United Nations Environment Programme on its fifth special session and the decisions contained therein;4 2. Recognizes, in particular, the Governing Council decision on the revitalization, reform and strengthening of the United Nations Environment Programme,5 including the areas of concentration of the activities of the Programme as proposed by the Executive Director in keeping with the spirit of the Nairobi Declaration on the Role and Mandate of the United Nations Environment Programme,3 as well as other priority areas of the Programme, as established by the Governing Council at its nineteenth session; 3. Welcomes the adoption by the Conference of Plenipotentiaries, at Rotterdam, Netherlands, on 11 September 1998, of the Convention on the Prior Informed Consent Procedure for Certain Hazardous Chemicals and Pesticides in International Trade, and takes note of the fact that the functions of the secretariat of the Convention are jointly performed by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations and the United Nations Environment Programme as an interim arrangement pending the final decision to be taken by the parties to the Convention on the location of the secretariat; 4. Also welcomes the holding of the first session of the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee for an International Legally Binding Instrument for Implementing International Action on Certain Persistent Organic Pollutants, which took place at Montreal, Canada, from 29 June to 3 July 1998, and further welcomes the positive role played by the United Nations Environment Programme in the field of environmental management of chemicals and especially the efforts undertaken by the Programme, as the secretariat of the convention, for the negotiations on a convention on persistent organic pollutants; 5. Emphasizes that the United Nations Environment Programme has been and must continue to be the principal United Nations body in the field of environment and that its role is to be the leading global environmental authority that sets the global environmental agenda, that promotes the coherent implementation of the environmental dimension of sustainable development within the United Nations system and that serves as an authoritative advocate for the global environment; 6. Welcomes the Governing Council decision,6 as well as the decisions taken by the Assembly of the Global Environment Facility at its meeting held at New Delhi from 1 to 3 April 1998 and by the Global Environment Facility Council at its meeting held in Washington, D.C., from 14 to 16 October 1998, regarding the role of the United Nations Environment Programme in the Facility, and also welcomes the collaboration with the Facility on freshwater resources, as in the global international water assessment, and on activities aimed at combating land degradation as they relate to the focal areas of the Facility; 7. Encourages the Executive Director of the United Nations Environment Programme to continue with the ongoing reform of the Programme, and recognizes, as stated in the Nairobi Declaration, that, in order to operationalize its mandate, a revitalized Programme needs adequate, stable and predictable 4 Ibid., Fifty-third Session, Supplement No. 25 (A/53/25). 5 Ibid., annex I, decision SS.V/2. 6 Ibid., decision SS.V/6. /...